Saikrishna Chavali posted the following question on my blog post about Data & UX being two ends of the product spectrum: I’ve got a question: how did you understand the user when you were in the ad business? Did you ever meet real users? In PM theory, one is instructed to empathise with the user by actually “getting out of the office”. Since it’s quite an important question, I thought I will...
I was catching up with Avinash (@avinashraghava) earlier today and we were chatting about product startups in the country. If you’ve been in this ecosystem, and seen the evolution of product companies, some interesting changes happened over the past few years. Back in 2001, at AdventNet, the Product Manager role was created, and so was the Usability Engineer role (which were primarily UX...
It is a cliché to say product management is both art and science. The product manager’s function encompasses a range of tasks, only limited by the company’s vision. Deep Nishar, Senior VP, Products and User Experience, at LinkedIn, told the audience at Nasscom Product Conclave 2012 that, “product managers should have brain of an engineer, heart of a designer and speech of a diplomat.” The product...
Notes from the Product Management Roundtable In Bangalore. Having attended the first ever iSPIRT Roundtable on Product Positioning in Bangalore and closely followed the second one held in Delhi, I was eagerly looking forward to the Round table in Bangalore on Product Management by Sridhar Ranganathan. Sridhar is a senior Product Management professional having spent considerable time in product...
I will be on a panel with several others at the IAMAI conference next week for the India Digital Summit and the discussion is about how to make 1000 digital startups happen annually in India. I thought I’d put some thoughts together and get some opinions before I present at the panel. Currently there are less than half that number of product companies being started each year. There are various...
