I've blogged in the past about the Seven Pillars of Product Management and indicated that theactivities of each of the pillars are asynchronous. We tend to think of the Seven Pillars as if they were aframework of process flowing from left to right, which isn't correct. The Seven Pillars are asynchronousactivities working concurrently. Each Pillar consumes and produces stock piles of product managementassets such as the problem statement or market requirement. The Seven Pillars are adapted to man...

Yes, I'm referring to that concept found in the 'Tipping Point' by Malcolm Gladwell. In his book, he asks the question, "Why is it that some ideas or behaviors or PRODUCTS start epidemics and others don't?". He follows up with another question, "And what can we do to deliberately start and control positive epidemics of our own?". I enjoyed the book, and I wanted to mention the 'stickiness factor', I guess because I recently saw this picture, and thought of it. This is a picture of a virus tha...

  "So what do you boys want to do?" I've had the opportunity to observe young Boy Scout leaders across the United States ask this question over and over again. I cringe every time I hear it. Don't get me wrong, they mean well. Those new Scout Masters want to be sure the program they're planning is one the boys will be interested in. Much like the concepts of market-driven products, and new Product Managers, they mean well. But I'll tell you what, there's no way the members of the Scout T...

The Market Sensing Pillar's goal is to create your company's perception of the market. Everything your organization has done, is doing, and will do to formulate a perception of the market is market sensing. "Market" is one of those words everyone thinks they understand, but no two people state it the same. In keeping with one of the primary goals of the Seven Pillars of Collaborative Product Management (develop a common language), it’s only right for me to provide a definition here. A market is...

Traditional Market Sensing keeps the customer at an arm's length in that they are asked what type of offering they would like, but then have no further involvement in new product development. It's difficult for customers to articulate the type of features they would like, especially if they’re unaware of the technology possibilities – in short, interactions with market researchers. It’s largely recognized that the work of Professor Eric von Hippel at MIT showed the importance of user communitie...