The Parable On June 26, 2017, English football team Crystal Palace enthusiastically announced the appointment of the great Dutch defender Frank de Boer as its new manager. Admittedly he was joining after a disappointing spell in Italy, but his success with the Dutch champions, Ajax, with whom he won the Champions League four consecutive times, […]
The ideas of Agile are great. It’s the way it has been codified into rituals and certifications, and rolled out mindlessly that misses the point. When people talk about Lean, the conversation often ends at process optimization, waste, and quality, and misses so much of what the Lean mindset offers. Design Thinking is held high as the […]
If you’re in a product company the chances are that you’ve developed some process of informing your users about new features. This could be in the form of a blog post or as a notification within the UI. But it doesn’t have to stop there. Spending a bit more effort on the process can help […]
Last week I joined the Mind the Product Leadership Forum in London. Among the speakers and panelists were Matt Walton, Julia Whitney, Roman Pichler, Arne Kittler, and Brant Cooper. It took me two days to get to London from Yogyakarta, Indonesia for the night before the sessions, but it was worth it. While I originally wrote […]
When I was a student, I took part in a negotiation exercise. We were given imaginary countries and had to negotiate our rights to the surrounding sea. The whole exercise quickly descended down into what the lecturer politely described as a study in realpolitik. To try and help us curb any dictatorial inclinations we were given […]
Examples of platforms are all around us. Businesses that have been successful at building platforms have disrupted traditional companies and scaled quickly. AirBNB, Amazon, Salesforce, and Uber are just some examples of platforms that have become massively successful in recent years. You’ll find platforms across many industries, from transportation to book publishing. For a product […]
What is the point of innovation? Why do we focus so much time and effort on digital transformation, agile transformation, and innovation? Simply put it’s because large organisations need to grow – and can’t. All of their current management practices optimise against anything new ever being successful. In the course of a storied career that […]
In this talk I share my lessons learnt from client engagements with many of the world’s largest organizations. I showcase how I’ve helped enterprises rekindle their capability and culture of experimentation and learning. What are the key aspects to consider? Where should you start? What are the tools and techniques to use? How do you […]
Gibson Biddle has worked in product at several entertainment companies, such as Netflix, Mattel, and EA, as well as educational companies such as Chegg and The Learning Company. In his presentation, he discusses “wicked hard” decision-making and how it is a practiced art, and can be very easy with practice. He discusses all of these […]
My Twitter feed is full of stories of Amazon seizing the lead in the smart home industry. While the Amazon Echo Show is an impressive addition to the repertoire of voice and video monitoring systems in this growing market, it’s not the product features that are drawing attention. Rather, it is Amazon’s smart home product […]
