The Everyday Innovator Podcast for Product Managers

Lean Startup or Stage-Gate? More often organizations are not choosing one or the other but taking the “and” option and integrating both into their product processes.  The challenge is how to get them to play nice with each other and gain the benefits of each without losing something in the process. To discuss this topic I turned to a well-experienced product manager and innovator who mentors young entrepreneurs as well as large companies, showing them how to put Lean into practice and align it with other methodologies, including Stage-Gate. My guest is Mark Adkins, president of Smart Hammer Innovation, a management consulting business that helps companies apply best practices to Innovation Management. He is also a part-time professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Medical Innovation. Mark shares how Lean Startup works best in the front end of Stage-Gate, enhancing an organization’s product process.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some concepts discussed: * [2:17] Mark’s first experience as a product manager earned him and his organization the Outstanding Corporate Innovator award. Not bad! * [9:40] Several product managers recognized the need for a faster way to find and test breakthrough ideas. This was pre-Lean Startup. Mark’s company formed a group called Innovation Ventures that operated outside of a stage-gate process to explore ideas in an environment with fewer constraints. * [10:00] Mark mentors students at the University of Pittsburgh in the Blast Furnace program for entrepreneurs. He uses Eric Ries’ Lean Startup materials and Alex Osterwalder’s Business Canvas/Value Proposition materials (see episode 123 for an interview with Alex Osterwalder). He has also applied the materials in large organizations. The breadth of experiences has provided important insights. * [11:25] An example is Mark’s engagement with a large company he has worked with for the last year and a half integrating lean startup methodology as pre-stage gate (or stage 0) process. The company had a very solid stage-gate process but lacked breakthrough product development. Adding Lean improved that. * [15:31] Big companies struggle with the concept of “fail fast.” What is important is that learning takes place. When you’re doing your early customer investigation, thinking of value propositions, or considering product concepts, you’re in the early stages of innovation and your sole metric is based on asking, what am I learning? * [18:47] The standard stage-gate processes are: (1) scope, (2) business case, (3) development, (4) test & validation, and (5) launch. Add a zero stage for Lean. * [24:46] Stage 0 is built around Lean and is where a Learning Plan is created and conducted. A Learning Plan is an iterative loop of: * Ideation – create or discover ideas * Experimenting – designing experiments to test assumptions * Customer discovery – get out of the office and talk to customers about the idea * Business model canvas – create a one-page business plan to analyze the feasibility of the idea * [26:00] The idea is evaluated for feasibility using the areas of technical, clinical (for medical products), organizational, and financial. * [27:40] Keep turning the crank, moving through a Learning Plan, creating a new one, and moving through again, until you know how to solve a specific customer problem in a specific way that creates value for the customer and your organization. * [29:26] In addition to Eric Ries’ work,

Lean Startup or Stage-Gate? More often organizations are not choosing one or the other but taking the “and” option and integrating both into their product processes.  The challenge is how to get them to play nice with each other and gain the benefits of each without losing something in the process. To discuss this topic I turned to a well-experienced product manager and innovator who mentors young entrepreneurs as well as large companies, showing them how to put Lean into practice and align it with other methodologies, including Stage-Gate. My guest is Mark Adkins, president of Smart Hammer Innovation, a management consulting business that helps companies apply best practices to Innovation Management. He is also a part-time professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Medical Innovation. Mark shares how Lean Startup works best in the front end of Stage-Gate, enhancing an organization’s product process.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some concepts discussed: * [2:17] Mark’s first experience as a product manager earned him and his organization the Outstanding Corporate Innovator award. Not bad! * [9:40] Several product managers recognized the need for a faster way to find and test breakthrough ideas. This was pre-Lean Startup. Mark’s company formed a group called Innovation Ventures that operated outside of a stage-gate process to explore ideas in an environment with fewer constraints. * [10:00] Mark mentors students at the University of Pittsburgh in the Blast Furnace program for entrepreneurs. He uses Eric Ries’ Lean Startup materials and Alex Osterwalder’s Business Canvas/Value Proposition materials (see episode 123 for an interview with Alex Osterwalder). He has also applied the materials in large organizations. The breadth of experiences has provided important insights. * [11:25] An example is Mark’s engagement with a large company he has worked with for the last year and a half integrating lean startup methodology as pre-stage gate (or stage 0) process. The company had a very solid stage-gate process but lacked breakthrough product development. Adding Lean improved that. * [15:31] Big companies struggle with the concept of “fail fast.” What is important is that learning takes place. When you’re doing your early customer investigation, thinking of value propositions, or considering product concepts, you’re in the early stages of innovation and your sole metric is based on asking, what am I learning? * [18:47] The standard stage-gate processes are: (1) scope, (2) business case, (3) development, (4) test & validation, and (5) launch. Add a zero stage for Lean. * [24:46] Stage 0 is built around Lean and is where a Learning Plan is created and conducted. A Learning Plan is an iterative loop of: * Ideation – create or discover ideas * Experimenting – designing experiments to test assumptions * Customer discovery – get out of the office and talk to customers about the idea * Business model canvas – create a one-page business plan to analyze the feasibility of the idea * [26:00] The idea is evaluated for feasibility using the areas of technical, clinical (for medical products), organizational, and financial. * [27:40] Keep turning the crank, moving through a Learning Plan, creating a new one, and moving through again, until you know how to solve a specific customer problem in a specific way that creates value for the customer and your organization. * [29:26] In addition to Eric Ries’ work,

As product managers and innovators we are often at the center of change because our work involves creating something new, which itself is change. Further, we need to persuade and influence others to change their perspective and embrace our ideas for building better products. Sometimes the change is small, like a new feature to a product, while others it is large, like acquiring another company. Adding change management tools to our product management toolbox is wise, which is why I am bringing you the one and only creator of the Change Planning Toolkit. He also wrote the book, Charting Change: A Visual Toolkit for Making Change Stick. And, he is a recurring guest. Back in episode 024 he discussed five keys to developing an innovation culture. His name is Braden Kelley. In addition to being a speaker and executive trainer, he has helped numerous organizations increase their revenue and cut their costs through the creation of innovative strategies, organizational change, and improved organizational performance. I am glad to welcome Braden back to discuss change with us. Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some concepts discussed: * [3:26] People don’t automatically resist change. They resist change they don’t like or don’t want. If they want the change, they will support it. * [5:53] Change is definitely not easy; 70% of change efforts fail. That’s why Braden created the Change Planning Toolkit. As an innovator, he was being tasked with change initiatives and needed a toolkit to be successful. The Toolkit is based on what we’ve learned from Agile, Lean Startup, and change management methodologies. * [13:26] The framework for effectively dealing with a change initiative is called Architecting with Change and begins with Strategy and ends with Change Maintenance. See the figure below.   * [18:23] Using a tentative approach to making a change can be dangerous. For example, a leader sharing that we’ll try something new for 6 months and try something else if it doesn’t work may result in employees waiting out the 6 months for things to return to normal. * [20:26] There are 8 change mindsets in organizations that can be harnessed for success: (1) mover and shaker, (2) thrill seeker, (3) mission driven, (4) action oriented, (5) expert minded, (6) reward hunger, (7) team player, and (8) teachers. * [24:33] Even with good planning,  not everyone can be turned into a supporter. Those involved in a change can be characterized as (1) strong supporters, (2) tepid supporters, (3) disaffected, (4) passive resisters, and (5) passionate resisters. * [28:33] Creating and conveying a compelling vision of the future after the change is critical to the success of the change. This quote sums it up well, “Nobody cares what’s over the horizon unless you send back some pictures and a map of how to get there.” * [30:45] The chance of success greatly increases when you get the right people involved from the beginning and they are involved in building the plan. Those that will be impacted by the change should contribute to the plan.   Useful links: * Change Planning Tools * Disruptive Innovation Toolkit, including the Experiment Canvas * Braden’s book, Charting Change: A Visual Toolkit for Making Change Stick   Innovation Quote “True innovation requires that you consciously leave the breadcrumb trail behind for others to follow and come join you.” – Braden Kelley  

As product managers and innovators we are often at the center of change because our work involves creating something new, which itself is change. Further, we need to persuade and influence others to change their perspective and embrace our ideas for building better products. Sometimes the change is small, like a new feature to a product, while others it is large, like acquiring another company. Adding change management tools to our product management toolbox is wise, which is why I am bringing you the one and only creator of the Change Planning Toolkit. He also wrote the book, Charting Change: A Visual Toolkit for Making Change Stick. And, he is a recurring guest. Back in episode 024 he discussed five keys to developing an innovation culture. His name is Braden Kelley. In addition to being a speaker and executive trainer, he has helped numerous organizations increase their revenue and cut their costs through the creation of innovative strategies, organizational change, and improved organizational performance. I am glad to welcome Braden back to discuss change with us. Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some concepts discussed: * [3:26] People don’t automatically resist change. They resist change they don’t like or don’t want. If they want the change, they will support it. * [5:53] Change is definitely not easy; 70% of change efforts fail. That’s why Braden created the Change Planning Toolkit. As an innovator, he was being tasked with change initiatives and needed a toolkit to be successful. The Toolkit is based on what we’ve learned from Agile, Lean Startup, and change management methodologies. * [13:26] The framework for effectively dealing with a change initiative is called Architecting with Change and begins with Strategy and ends with Change Maintenance. See the figure below.   * [18:23] Using a tentative approach to making a change can be dangerous. For example, a leader sharing that we’ll try something new for 6 months and try something else if it doesn’t work may result in employees waiting out the 6 months for things to return to normal. * [20:26] There are 8 change mindsets in organizations that can be harnessed for success: (1) mover and shaker, (2) thrill seeker, (3) mission driven, (4) action oriented, (5) expert minded, (6) reward hunger, (7) team player, and (8) teachers. * [24:33] Even with good planning,  not everyone can be turned into a supporter. Those involved in a change can be characterized as (1) strong supporters, (2) tepid supporters, (3) disaffected, (4) passive resisters, and (5) passionate resisters. * [28:33] Creating and conveying a compelling vision of the future after the change is critical to the success of the change. This quote sums it up well, “Nobody cares what’s over the horizon unless you send back some pictures and a map of how to get there.” * [30:45] The chance of success greatly increases when you get the right people involved from the beginning and they are involved in building the plan. Those that will be impacted by the change should contribute to the plan.   Useful links: * Change Planning Tools * Disruptive Innovation Toolkit, including the Experiment Canvas * Braden’s book, Charting Change: A Visual Toolkit for Making Change Stick   Innovation Quote “True innovation requires that you consciously leave the breadcrumb trail behind for others to follow and come join you.” – Braden Kelley  

I met my guest at a Product Camp and learned that we shared a perspective about innovation and product management processes. He sums up this perspective as being “anti-dogma.” There is a good deal of dogma around processes and too often processes are applied blindly without knowing the details required to use the process wisely in a specific situation and culture. In this interview, we discuss the issue of process dogma as well as a toolbox approach to the work a product manager does. My guest is Chris Spagnuolo. Chris is a product management and innovation consultant who works with organizations of all sizes to deeply understand their portfolio and product challenges and help them design opportunities to improve. He has led cross-functional, collaborative, agile product teams at organizations of all sizes and successfully founded three startups. He avoids dogma and instead focuses on generating insights through deep understanding of the organizations that he works with to identify a sustainable, adaptable journey for them to achieve their goals.

I met my guest at a Product Camp and learned that we shared a perspective about innovation and product management processes. He sums up this perspective as being “anti-dogma.” There is a good deal of dogma around processes and too often processes are applied blindly without knowing the details required to use the process wisely in a specific situation and culture. In this interview, we discuss the issue of process dogma as well as a toolbox approach to the work a product manager does. My guest is Chris Spagnuolo. Chris is a product management and innovation consultant who works with organizations of all sizes to deeply understand their portfolio and product challenges and help them design opportunities to improve. He has led cross-functional, collaborative, agile product teams at organizations of all sizes and successfully founded three startups. He avoids dogma and instead focuses on generating insights through deep understanding of the organizations that he works with to identify a sustainable, adaptable journey for them to achieve their goals.

  In this episode, we are talking about sales people and how product managers can improve their work with sales people. For some product managers, sales professionals are a source of tension, maybe because they overpromise and make product commitments without first coordinating with product management. For other product managers, sales professionals provide access to customers and help arrange problem-discovery interviews. They are an ally to product management. Regardless of your working relationship with sales professionals, there is room for improvement. To explore this topic you would be hard-pressed to find anyone better than my guest, Keith Hawk. Keith has incredible street cred for this topic as he worked in a technology support role early in this career, working with sales professionals and product management. From there he served as the Director of Technology Support, Director of Marketing, VP Customer Support, and recently retired from his long-term role as the Senior Vice President of Sales for LexisNexis, a multi-billion dollar organization with over 10,000 employees. Keith has a very rich background in the information industry and he has played a broad role in the development of LexisNexis as a company. He is also the author of the book Get-Real Selling: Your Personal Coach for REAL Sales Excellence, which greatly influenced my thoughts on the function of Sales. Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some concepts discussed: * Business-to-Business sales is about one thing – helping to make other people’s businesses more successful. Aspects of this include helping them help their customers, improving the economics of their business, and improving the personal quality of their lives. * A poor sales person can be thought of as a bag diver – a walking, talking brochure that is just spitting out product features until they find a feature or a product someone cares about — reaching into their bag of brochures over and over. * 3 things a good sales professional wants from product managers are: * Availability – open communication to discuss opportunities that may require a new product feature or an entirely new product. * Interaction – product managers that can interact with customers and understand how customers actually use products and feel their challenges. * Formalize – define the relationship between Sales and Product Management and schedule periodic collaboration to share successes and opportunities. * When a sales person overcommits with a customer, promising a capability that doesn’t currently exist, a big girl, big boy talk is needed between Sales and Product Management leadership. Ask if this was our money, would it be in our best interest and the best interest of the customer to create the new capability. A foundation of expectations – values and standards to live by – should exist between Sales and Product Management. * Product Management and Sales leadership need to set ground rules for customer discovery meetings and general interactions. * Product managers can have customer discovery meetings with sales people during the early stages of a customer sales cycle, before a sales person has created a recommendation for the customer, without concern of the meeting becoming a sales meeting. * To avoid Sales too frequently engaging product managers to meet with customers, consider if sales engineers are needed. Also, set an expectation between Sales and Product Management for how much of a product manager’s time can be devoted to direct support of Sales, such as 10% of their time.   Useful links: * Keith’s book,

  In this episode, we are talking about sales people and how product managers can improve their work with sales people. For some product managers, sales professionals are a source of tension, maybe because they overpromise and make product commitments without first coordinating with product management. For other product managers, sales professionals provide access to customers and help arrange problem-discovery interviews. They are an ally to product management. Regardless of your working relationship with sales professionals, there is room for improvement. To explore this topic you would be hard-pressed to find anyone better than my guest, Keith Hawk. Keith has incredible street cred for this topic as he worked in a technology support role early in this career, working with sales professionals and product management. From there he served as the Director of Technology Support, Director of Marketing, VP Customer Support, and recently retired from his long-term role as the Senior Vice President of Sales for LexisNexis, a multi-billion dollar organization with over 10,000 employees. Keith has a very rich background in the information industry and he has played a broad role in the development of LexisNexis as a company. He is also the author of the book Get-Real Selling: Your Personal Coach for REAL Sales Excellence, which greatly influenced my thoughts on the function of Sales. Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some concepts discussed: * Business-to-Business sales is about one thing – helping to make other people’s businesses more successful. Aspects of this include helping them help their customers, improving the economics of their business, and improving the personal quality of their lives. * A poor sales person can be thought of as a bag diver – a walking, talking brochure that is just spitting out product features until they find a feature or a product someone cares about — reaching into their bag of brochures over and over. * 3 things a good sales professional wants from product managers are: * Availability – open communication to discuss opportunities that may require a new product feature or an entirely new product. * Interaction – product managers that can interact with customers and understand how customers actually use products and feel their challenges. * Formalize – define the relationship between Sales and Product Management and schedule periodic collaboration to share successes and opportunities. * When a sales person overcommits with a customer, promising a capability that doesn’t currently exist, a big girl, big boy talk is needed between Sales and Product Management leadership. Ask if this was our money, would it be in our best interest and the best interest of the customer to create the new capability. A foundation of expectations – values and standards to live by – should exist between Sales and Product Management. * Product Management and Sales leadership need to set ground rules for customer discovery meetings and general interactions. * Product managers can have customer discovery meetings with sales people during the early stages of a customer sales cycle, before a sales person has created a recommendation for the customer, without concern of the meeting becoming a sales meeting. * To avoid Sales too frequently engaging product managers to meet with customers, consider if sales engineers are needed. Also, set an expectation between Sales and Product Management for how much of a product manager’s time can be devoted to direct support of Sales, such as 10% of their time.   Useful links: * Keith’s book,

TEI 128: Creating better product teams – with Nate Walkingshaw

  Back in episode 121 I had the pleasure of talking with Richard Banfield, one of three authors of the new book Product Leadership. Then, in episode 125 I spoke with Martin Eriksson, who also is a co-author of the book. So, it seemed only proper that I make this a true trifecta by interviewing the third co-author, which is Nate Walkingshaw. I was especially eager to do this after Richard told me that Nate is the smartest product person he knows. Nate has some firm opinions on product teams and how to structure teams to work well. You may have seen his thought-provoking post on Mind the Product titled, “Agile Died While You Were Doing Your Standup.” In our discussion, we touch on concepts from that post but dive deeper into team structures and needs for modern product teams. Nate has started successful companies in the medical and fitness markets and has had many product experiences. Later he became the Chief Product Officer for Pluralsight, the largest providers of online technology learning, where he built a user-centered product team. In 2016 his role expanded to Chief Experience Officer where he oversees Development, Content, and Product Marketing.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some concepts discussed: * Nate’s new book, Product Leadership, is now available. It is the first book focused on product leadership for product managers. * Software as a Service (SaaS) has forced teams to change. The feedback loop between users and developers is now “end-of-the-day” – hours, not days. * Siloed teams won’t work today – product teams must be fully integrated. * Corporate strategy and technology strategy must be aligned. * The three key elements for teams that increase velocity are: * Vision – is there a clear vision for each product team and are they connected to the vision? * Strategy – do team members know the product strategy and how their work fits into the strategy of the team and the organization? * Autonomy – do team members have the freedom to explore the execution of the strategy for the team? * Velocity also increases when team members experience first-hand how customers respond to using the product and to changes when they are made. Web collaboration tools are used with customers for real-time interactions. * Compensate teams, not individuals, for meeting objectives. Useful links’ * New Book – Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams * Pluralsite—technology training and where Nate is Chief Experience Officer   Innovation Quote “In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.” ― Eric Hoffer   Thanks! Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.

  This is a listener suggested episode, which I love doing. I enjoy receiving requests from listeners asking for specific topics to explore. Several people have had questions about B2B product management. A B2B company sells its products to other organizations while a B2C company provides its products to consumers. To explore this topic, I asked Jeff Lash to join us. Jeff is a recognized thought leader in product management, with over a decade of experience in the development of Web-based products and SaaS systems. His product management career includes both new product launches and major turnarounds of existing product lines, as well as creation of the product management role into organizations. He has significant expertise in customer understanding, new product innovation, agile product management, user experience design, and product development processes. He is a Vice President at SiriusDecisions, a research and advisory company for B2B organizations. While the focus of our discussion is on product management for B2B companies, there are tips and practices B2C product managers will find valuable too.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some questions discussed: * How does B2B product management differ from B2C? The B2B product group is like a smaller business in a larger business. B2B product managers are generally responsible for an entire product while a B2C product manager may be responsible for a portion of a product, for example, the Search capability of a product. While there are many similarities, I’m starting to see some trends in differences, such as with the importance of user experience design. Also, B2B product managers are more involved in enabling and helping the sales team be successful.   * How do B2B sales models impact product management? Direct or indirect sale channels are part of the B2B product manager’s tools and responsibilities. Product Management is interlocked with the Marketing and Sales function of an organization. Product managers can get overloaded by Sales and sucked into helping too much with questions and customer calls instead of doing the work of product management. Organizations that excel have balance. They have clear responsibilities for product managers in terms of how they support Sales and well-communicated ground rules. Also, Product Marketing exists as a function to transfer knowledge of the product to rest of the organization. We see alignment between the executives responsible for Product Management, Marketing, and Sales.   * How do buying roles impact product management? This is a key difference with B2B product management compared to B2C. In a B2B environment, there are multiple buyers, such as Decision Maker, Champion, Influencer, and GateKeeper, in addition to the actual users of the product. Product managers need to address personas for each of the roles involved in the buying process and also help Sales understand these roles and vice-versa.   * How can product managers avoid the “one-off” practice that some B2B organizations find themselves in – customizing a product for each customer? Organizational culture is a key influencer to this situation. Some cultures permit sales professionals to write new product capabilities into customer contracts and then product management has to find a way to satisfy the expectations created by Sales. This is a poor practice. Executives need to be in alignment and have a clear means of addressing specific customer requests. One technique is to have an agreed upon percentage of product management and development resources to respond to requests from Sales. For example, 20% of the roadmap is set aside to be sales opportunity driven. Also, when new product functionality is needed to “close” a deal or keep a customer,

TEI 127: B2B product management – with Jeff Lash

A brand new book for product managers and innovators hits physical and virtual shelves this week. It's titled Mapping Innovation and my guest, Greg Satell, is the author. We talk about some of the concepts from the book and other writing he has done, including while there is no one-way right way for companies to innovate, there are patterns, as well as a framework for different types of innovations and skills needed for each. Greg has several international business experiences building and managing media businesses. He last served as the SVP of Strategy and Innovation at Moxie Interactive, a leading marketing services organizations. Lately he has been writing and speaking about innovation and I'm glad he is speaking with us, in this interview.

TEI 126: Mapping innovation – with Greg Satell

  You are not alone as a product manager or innovator if you have had to explain your job to people you work with. It’s not uncommon. While your role is vital to the creation of successful products, it is not always understood by others. It can also be a lonely role because of that. Even though product managers frequently collaborate with others, they don’t often interact with other product managers – people who actually understand their job along with the joys, frustrations, and pains it brings. What is a product manager or innovator to do? My guest has the answer, and it is one I have experienced and valued myself – participating in communities of practice. My guest is a co-author of the book, Product Leadership, which was the topic of episode 121 with one of the other co-authors. He started his career as a web designer and developer but found his real talent was translating between design, development, and business people. After several startups in his native Stockholm, he has led product teams at Monster, the Financial Times, Huddle, and Covestor in London and Boston. You may recognize him as the founder of ProductTank, a meetup for product managers, and co-founder of Mind the Product, a blog and training resource for product managers. His name is Martin Eriksson. Our discussion covers why product managers need to be part of a community of practice and, if you are not already, how to join or start one. Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of some questions discussed: * Please share an update on your Product Leadership book.  It’s being released next week, at the end of May. Details are available at Productleadershipbook.com. We interviewed 75-100 product leaders to understand the challenges with product leadership and how to overcome them. We are discussing the book at some upcoming meetups as well as the Mind the Product annual conference in June in San Francisco.   * What is a community of practice? If you look at established professions like Law, Engineering, or Project Management, you find strong professional groups where people come together to learn from each other and explore what is new. That is a community of practice. It may take the form of a meetup, professional association, or another form of group.   * Why do product managers need to be part of a community of practice? Product managers can feel a bit alone on the job. We may be the only product manager on a team. You don’t have anyone to complain to about the work and bounce ideas off of that also understands the role. You can feel like Engineering is ganging up on you, Business Leadership is putting undue pressure on you, or Sales is ignoring you.  You need get out of that environment at times and talk to peers in similar situations and know that you really are not alone. You need a tribe of your own to be part of.   * What should product managers expect from a productive community of practice? Product managers need to be curious and always learning. The pace of change in industries and technologies requires product managers to be learning and striving to stay in front of the meaningful changes. The ability to learn from your peers is the most important aspect of a community of practice. You also get to hear about the challenges others are facing. It’s important to know that you are not alone and that others encounter similar issues.   * What are opportunities for product managers? One group that has been around is Product Camp. It’s a one-day unconference, generally with no set agenda that self-organizes shortly before the conference or even the morning of the conference by the attendees. Product Tank that I started has more than a 100 locations around the world. It is a fairly standardized format, with meetings taking place in the evenings after work ...