Building The Case For A Market-Focused Approach w/ Greg Whit

09/12/11 • 32 min

New product ideas can come from many places. A customer may request a specific solution to address a business challenge. A competitor may introduce a new game-changing concept that needs to be answered. New regulations may cause a need for which there is no solution yet. An executive may have a pet idea that they’ve fallen in love with and want to bring to life. An observed overall market trend may point to an emerging need. These ideas should all result in the development of business cases. The responsibility of creating the business case usually falls on the shoulders of the product manager. Whether the idea is the brainchild of the product manager or not, it’s the product manager who must make the case. If the product fails, it’s often the product manager who takes the blame. Therefore, product managers need to be the voice of reason when a not-so-great idea introduced by an influential person in the company doesn’t look like it’s going to fly with the target market as conceived. "This discussion assumes that the audience is familiar with business cases. It's about steering the direction of the company and business cases are one of the tools to do that. Another is a clear vision of the future in the form of a good product roadmap," states Greg White. Greg White Co-founded ProductCamp SoCal, an "unconference" educational and networking event for local product management and marketing professsionals. Greg also founded Orange County Product Managers, a rapidly-growing professional organization that facilitates the exchange of ideas, resources and contacts between product management and product marketing professionals in Orange County, California. Follow @GregWhiteOC @prodmgmttalk http://www.prodmgmttalk.com

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Pre-Global ProdMgmtTalk w/ Brandi Moore on PM and India

In today's globalized environment we are all expected to be global Product Managers working with people from very different beliefs about work. India and the US are almost exactly opposite in their business preferences. These preferences show up when organizing a meeting, inside virtual environments like wiki's, deadlines being missed, product deliverables being wrong, and low levels of team retention. Brandi Moore, Founder of IndiaThink and the first American focused on building global business relationships between India and the US, will join us to discuss the challenges product managers face and offer perspectives on how culture may be at the root of many business problems. "Our conversation will offer insights to a community that is stepping into global management on a daily basis and needs to understand how India's business preferences are very different, impacting everything that happens during product development cycles."

Next Episode

Product Camp Radio w/ John Peltier, Product Camp Atlanta

John Peltier is a frequent participant in the product management community on Twitter, and as an organizer of ProductCamps. He's participated on the organizing committee of four ProductCamp unconferences in Austin and two in Atlanta. This past weekend, he presented a session at ProductCamp Atlanta entitled "Personas in Design and Strategy". http://bit.ly/qMnlB8 John says, "I’m excited to contribute more, in a different way, to the product management and ProductCamp communities!" Follow @johnpeltier http://johnpeltier.com Host: Cindy F. Solomon @cindyfsolomon of Global Product Management Talk @prodmgmttalk