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Books From Practical Product Managment Seminar
Suggested reading for product managers and marketers
| Differentiate or Die: Survival in Our Era of Killer Competition by Jack Trout Jack Trout has spent the last few decades trying to get us to differentiate. He laments the “me too” products of our era and reminds us that copycat products always fail. Using new examples to support traditional ideas, Trout and Rivkin give clear guidelines for differentiating products and companies, and more importantly, show us why many of the traditional company capabilities are no longer a differentiating idea. “Differentiate or Die” should read by all senior executives and all marketing professionals. It teaches some of us and reminds the rest of us. |
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| The Market Research Toolbox: A Concise Guide for Beginners by Edward F. McQuarrie A resource for novice marketing professionals, defining marketing research of various types, and examining the goals and techniques associated with six traditional market research methods. Also discusses nontraditional market research, and shows how to combine individual market research techniques into a research strategy. |
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| Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Design by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt Contextual Design explains the customer's role in product design to high-tech product teams. It gives techniques and procedures on how to integrate customers (and potential customers) into the development cycle. The most important section for product managers is the chapter on techniques for interviewing (called "Contextual Inquiry" in the book's lexicon) details how to conduct an onsite interview, what to watch for, and which follow-up questions to ask. While geared to the systems analyst, the book is valuable to anyone responsible for gathering prospect problems at an onsite meeting. |
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| Voices into Choices: Acting on the Voice of the Customer by Gary Burchill, Christina Hepner Brodie Offers the FOCUS process--a proven methodology to help you ground your actions using your customer's perspectives. Learn how to: Effectively conduct in-depth customer interviews, capture customer voices verbatim, produce data that is capsulized in language, not numbers, and transform data into blueprint of action. |
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| The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. Christensen The "Innovator's Dilemma" is how a successful company with established products keeps from being pushed aside by newer, cheaper products that will, over time, get better and become a serious threat. Christensen writes in The Innovataor's Solution how companies can encourage innovation and how to ensure their success in the market. |
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| Innovation Happens Elsewhere, First Edition : Open Source as Business Strategy by Ron Goldman, Richard P. Gabriel "Innovation Happens Elsewhere is at least as important for those who have no interest in software as those who do, because in the details of the history and practice of the open source community lie clues to the institutional adaptations of the information economy; in the clauses of the various software licenses lie the case law that will come to define property in the information age. There are other books that have a great deal to say about this evolution, but none combines the personal experience and inside-out insight to be gained from the engagement of Ron Goldman and Richard Gabriel in so many flesh-and-blood open source projects and the development of the structures that have supported them."—from the foreword by Chris Meyer, Monitor Group |
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| The Marketing Playbook: Five Battle-Tested Plays for Capturing and Keeping the Lead in Any Market by John Zagula, Rich Tong A comprehensive book focused five product marketing strategies from The Drag Race to the Stealth Play. |
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| How to Drive Your Competition Crazy: Creating Disruption for Fun and Profit by Guy Kawasaki “How to Drive Your Competition Crazy” is a fun book about dealing with the competitive landscape. Along the way Kawasaki shows us techniques used in various companies and he has some anecdotes that will have you laughing out loud! In the final analysis, his message is, “Listen to your customers! It will drive your competition crazy!” |
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| The Art of Profitability by Adrian Slywotzky Introduces business and product performance considerations in a easy-to-read format. The author suggests that you read only one of the 32 chapters each week so that you can digest and apply the principle. His writing is refreshing change from the typical business book. |
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| Balanced Scorecard, Step-by-Step by Paul R. Niven In Balanced Scorecard Step-by-Step, Paul Niven shares his extensive experience in developing Balanced Scorecards for Fortune 1000, public sector, and not-for-profit organizations. The reader quickly learns that a Balanced Scorecard implementation is more than a "metrics" project, that it touches many critical organizational processes. Through detailed step-by-step discussions, Niven provides insight on and practical solutions for: developing performance objectives and measures that faithfully translate strategy, generating executive support, and assembling the right team. |
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| How to Really Create a Successful Business Plan by David E. Gumpert This book takes the mystery and intimidation out of detailed business plans, guiding executives step-by-step through the writing process. Readers view excerpts from the actual business plans of highly acclaimed companies like Celestial Seasonings, Software Publishing, and Pizza Hut. This book provides a proven step-by-step method for completing a high-quality business plan, provides models of business plans from some of America's most successful companies. |
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| The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: A Guide to Profitable Decision Making by Thomas T Nagle A comprehensive, managerially focused guide to creating pricing strategy. Strongly recommended to anyone involved with pricing products and services. |
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| Outsourcing In-a-Box by Bob Booton Product managers are faced with outsourcing challenges as management looks for ways to cut costs. The word “outsourcing” alone conjures up fear and uncertainty amongst the nation’s businesses, leaving questions unanswered about our economic future. With companies moving their manufacturing, software development and critical business processes to offshore suppliers, outsourcing has become the global issue” of our time. Outsourcing In-a-Box is a practical guide to getting started with outsourcing including who, what, when, why, and how. Bob Booton has been an outsourcing guru for Fortune 100 companies such as Sun Microsystems, Compaq, and Solectron. |
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| Intelligent Business Alliances: How to Profit Using Today's Most Important Strategic Tool by Lorraine Segil Alliances between companies have become a major competitive tool, allowing companies to exploit their complementary. However, many companies mishandle their alliances, wasting money, time, and effort. This book shows how to establish and manage profitable alliances. Also noteworthy is Segil's Fastalliances written for e-businesses. |
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| The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from Ideo, America's Leading Design Firm by Tom Kelley The Art of Innovation really teaches indirectly (not to mention enlightens and entertains) by telling great stories--mainly, of how the best ideas for creating or improving products or processes come not from laboriously organized focus groups, but from keen observations of how regular people work and play on a daily basis. |
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| How Breakthroughs Happen by Andrew Hargadon This book explains why so few companies actually innovate. Innovative companies have smart people, like everyone else, but they also have broad experience beyond one industry. So they can apply techniques already employed in one industry to solve a problem in another industry. Their minds are open to the possibility that a squirt gun reduced in size and filled with saline can become a medical device for clearing a wound; an inflatable pillow becomes the bladder for an inflatable shoe. The author argues, "The future is here already but it's unevenly distributed." Companies with a track record of innovation have broad experience in many disciplines rather than deep experience in one discipline. |
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| Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries & Jack Trout Witty and fast-paced, this book spells out how to position a leader so that it gets into the mind and stays there, position a follower in a way that finds a 'hole' not occupied by the leader, and avoid the pitfalls of letting a second product ride on the coattails of an established one. Positioning reveals the fascinating case histories and anecdotes behind the campaigns of many stunning successes and failures in the world of advertising. |
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| The Channel Advantage: Going to Market With Multiple Sales Channels to Reach More Customers, Sell More Products, Make More Profit by Lawrence G. Friedman The book has two key strengths: it is comprehensive (and generally well detailed); more importantly, it provides working templates for developing a channel strategy. The Channel Advantage presents logical starting points for channel analysis--our product-market focus and customer buying habits. It provides tools to access and compare channel economics and build and manage sales channels. |
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| Customer Centric Selling by Michael Bosworth and John R. Holland CustomerCentric Selling shows salespeople how to differentiate their offerings by appealing to customer needs, steering away from making one-way presentations and toward having meaningful, goal-oriented conversations. Currently offered in workshops and seminars around the world, its program provides step-by-step directions to help sales professionals |
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