The product manager is a "mini-CEO," responsible for overseeing a product through its entire lifecycle-from ideation to development to market introduction to retirement. In this course, you will learn the difference in roles between a product manager and a project manager, the key responsibilities and attributes of a product manager, the four stages of product development, and how to support a product management model in your organization.
Building a solid product strategy is a crucial first step in creating a product that will enjoy a smooth development, meet your user's most pressing needs, and successfully find its place in the market. In this course, you will learn the key components of a successful product strategy, crucial questions to ask in defining your product strategy, the steps to creating a product strategy, how to build a data-driven product roadmap, and common mistakes in building a product strategy and how to avoid them.
Metrics are a vital tool for achieving your product strategy. Using the proper metrics will let you build the right goals into your product strategy and let you know how well you are achieving those goals. In this course, you will learn how to use metrics to achieve your product strategy goals, how to build a metric-driven product strategy, key concepts for getting the most value from your metrics, how to choose metrics to help you shape your product strategy, and how to measure how successfully customer needs are being met.
Organizations adopt Agile business practices in order to provide their customers with better products more quickly. Building a product roadmap helps support an organization's Agile practices by clearly identifying the "why" behind their product development activities. In this course, you will learn the purposes of an Agile product roadmap, the advantages for building an Agile product roadmap, the steps for building an Agile product roadmap, the best practices for building an Agile product roadmap, and the different types of Agile product roadmaps you can build.
Succeeding in product management requires not only knowing how to design a viable product, but how to position it in the marketplace so that it sells better than your competitors' products. Competitive and market analytics lets product managers benchmark their efforts against those of their rivals to see whose market strategies are winning the battle for customers hearts and minds. In this course, you will learn how to leverage competitive and market analytics to become an industry leader, how to use competitive analytics to gain insight on your competition, how to use market analytics to better understand changes in the marketplace, how to use price-benefit positional maps to position your product in the marketplace, and how to create and sustain an analytics advantage.
Successfully launching a product can be pivotal to a company's continued success. A Go-to-Market plan will guide you to the right customers and the right markets with the most efficient use of time and resources. In this course, you will learn when to use a Go-to-Market plan, the contents of a Go-to-Market plan, how to prepare to build a Go-to-Market plan, the elements top define in a Go-to-Market plan, and the steps to take when building a Go-to-Market plan.
Product managers have many ideas on how to design their product to meet the customers' needs. The challenge is to determine which of those ideas have the best chance of working. Increasingly, product managers are using large-scale randomized experiments to test the effectiveness of their ideas. In this course, you will learn how to use experimentation to make the best product management decisions, best practices for conducting effective experiments, the stages of conducting an experiment, how to optimize your product process with the design of experiments approach, and how to increase customer satisfaction with the user-experience-based design approach.
Making sure the right people have the right information at the right time can make or break a company. Since product managers are at the hub of a company's activities, they bear much of the communication burden in the organization. It's their responsibility to make sure everyone has a shared understanding of what's going on. In this course, you will learn how product managers serve as a communication hub within their organization, how to get the most mileage out of your communication channels, how to polish your public speaking skills, how to keep everyone in your company on the same page, how to foster cross-team, communications, and how to map out your communication strategy.
To create a successful product, you need to build something that the customer would need, want, and buy. Customer development is a process for learning everything you need to about the customer's behaviors, motivations, and pain points in order to create and optimize product development ideas. In this course, you will learn how to create a customer-centric business approach using the customer development process, how to master the customer development process, how to effectively gather customer feedback, how to conduct productive customer development interviews, and the elements of the customer buying process.
Whether you’re striving to gain support for your ideas in the world of business or in everyday life, The Art of Explanation will give you the tools to bring others on board. In this Review, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
Believe it or not, everyone has the potential to be creative. If you're struggling to express your ideas, then something is getting in the way. But with the right approach and techniques, team leaders can provide a safe space that encourages brainstorming, innovating, and creative thinking. In this course, you'll learn about characteristics of creative people, how to overcome personal barriers, and how to foster team innovation in a work environment. It describes personal barriers to creativity and how to overcome them and provides strategies for enhancing creativity in the workplace. It also outlines key requirements for promoting creativity and explores techniques for fostering creativity in teams.
In this course, you will learn techniques for developing a team of "creative gurus" - team members who excel at generating innovative ideas. You will learn ways to assemble your team, generate creative ideas, overcome barriers to team creativity, and foster a creative workplace.
The Ten Faces of Innovation outlines, with interesting case studies, how IDEO’s ten organizational roles have been adopted by several major companies to create a corporate culture that is open to innovation. In this Review, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
Whether you’re struggling with writer’s block or just can’t seem to conjure a brilliant idea at the drop of a hat, The Four Lenses of Innovation provides a road map to becoming more inventive with less effort. In this Review, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
Ten Types of Innovation provides you with the practical steps and smarts you need to break down barriers to success. In this Review, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
Engaging directly with stakeholders increases empathy and helps identify motivations and unmet needs, enabling the creation of successful solutions. In this course, you'll learn how to identify and interact with key stakeholders and communicate their point of view through effective design thinking methods. This course was developed with subject matter provided by PDD. (www.pddinnovation.com)
Engaging with stakeholders produces valuable data, which can be constructively used for analyzing the stakeholder experience. In this course, you will learn how to translate data into actionable insights and define opportunities through tools like experience mapping and affinity clustering. This course was developed with subject matter provided by PDD. (www.pddinnovation.com)
Brainstorming without structure rarely yields plentiful and new results. In this course, you'll learn techniques to spur creative thinking, and techniques to communicate and critique ideas. This course was developed with subject matter provided by PDD. (www.pddinnovation.com)
The Design Thinking approach advocates early stakeholder engagement in the co-creation and development of solutions. In this course, you'll learn about techniques for prototyping and testing in order to iteratively develop solutions more efficiently with stakeholders. This course was developed with subject matter provided by PDD. (www.pddinnovation.com)
Are you ready for the next big change? For over a century, changes in the business landscape have forced organizations to react quickly. Some were able to pivot and remain successful, while others could not adapt to the change and failed. Does your organization have what it takes to respond successfully to the next big change? In this course, you will learn how a culture of innovation prepares an organization for whatever may be around the corner. You will learn what a culture of innovation looks like before delving into details around how to lead for such a culture. From attracting and nurturing talent to building innovative teams, this course will help you get future-ready with a culture of innovation.
The main aim of your organization's product or service is to help your customers achieve a specific goal or overcome a problem. This is where the concept of design thinking comes in. Design thinking is a customer-centric approach to determining how best to meet customer needs. In this course, you'll explore ways to develop customer focus to help you define problems. You'll explore design thinking strategies, including how to reframe problems, how to brainstorm solutions, and when to use prototypes. You'll also identify best practices for user testing, as well as for and gathering and reviewing feedback for effective problem solving.
Designing for Growth provides a stage-based design thinking process to help business managers conquer challenging problems. In this Summary, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
By elucidating the thought processes designers use to satisfy real-world problems, Change by Design shows you how to graft design thinking into your business process. In this Review, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
Successful marketing is about optimizing relationships with your customers. That not only includes the value you offer them, but the value you get from them in return. Businesses apply best practices in marketing to find and better understand their customers, to inform how they can most effectively advertise, and to stand out from their competition. In this course, you'll learn about the key role of modern marketing and how companies effectively plan their marketing strategies. You'll gain understanding of how market segments are determined, how customers are targeted, and how organizations reach their customers. Finally, you'll learn the ways that digital marketing resources like social media can positively impact business marketing efforts.
People don't buy products. They buy brands. Who creates brands? People. How do they do it? Through proper marketing research and planning. The traditional marketing mix emphasizes the four P's: product, price, place, and promotion. However, this fails to address two other important aspects of marketing: planning and people. Planning and people are vital to any marketing effort. Marketing planning guides how marketing is carried out, so it's imperative that it is informed and comprehensive. And because employees impact the marketing mix so strongly, it's equally important to ensure they understand and support the company's marketing actions. In this course, you'll learn about the types of people needed to create and support strong brands. You'll become familiar with internal branding and the importance of engaging employees as brand ambassadors. You'll also learn about how strategic and tactical planning are employed for conducting effective and cohesive marketing research that will inform digital marketing efforts. Finally, you'll learn about the factors that contribute to an integrated marketing communication plan.
To bring a product or service to market successfully, a marketer needs to understand a broad set of tools and concepts. Guided by customer insights, marketers position their offerings in the marketplace and in the buyer's mind. They use the marketing communication techniques of advertising, sales promotions, direct marketing, and public relations to build brands and enhance perceived value. This course explains how a product or brand manager uses detailed knowledge of their customers to influence design of the offering, to manage pricing and distribution channels, and to plan and execute a promotion strategy. The course explores the use of digital technologies including websites, social media, and mobile devices to build relationships with customers and drive sales.
Marketing isn't just about making your product look good; it's also about building customer trust. When you plan for the four Ps of marketing, it's helpful to consider the ethical ramifications of each. In this course, you will learn about ethical choices in the marketing mix. From products and placement to pricing and promotion, you will learn about ethical marketing for each element.
In the digital marketplace, businesses are always looking for ways to set themselves apart and to find an edge over their competitors. By recognizing and applying the tenets of competitive advantage, companies emphasize and align to their customer needs and communicate their advantages clearly and persuasively. In this course you'll learn about elements of competitive advantage, such as communicating company values through corporate social responsibility actions. You'll also learn about external branding, focusing marketing efforts through a customer lens, and communicating an effective and appealing value proposition. Finally, you'll examine AI and other innovative analytics tools that are used to enhance competitive advantage.
More than ever, people are using social media. They aren't just interacting with friends, but with businesses as well. Today, customers expect businesses to reach them on social media. As a result, social media not only gives businesses invaluable customer data, it provides an effective way to promote products and services to grow the business as well. In this course, you'll learn the key features and benefits of social media for businesses, and become familiar with its key concepts and terminology, essential to understanding the role it can play in engaging with customers, providing support, advertising, and generating business. You'll also learn about the most popular social media tools, and how personal branding and an active community can be a real differentiator for your organization, and how it can support your overall business objectives. This course was developed in partnership with the Digital Marketing Institute. (www.digitalmarketinginstitute.com For those who are interested in pursuing a certification, please contact the Digital Marketing Institute directly via this website: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/lp/skillsoft
Social media is one of the most vital technologies companies can use to attract, connect with, and retain customers. If you want to meet customers where they are, that's the place to be. In this course, you'll learn why social media is such an important tool of persuasion for businesses. You'll explore how companies use social media today as a key component of a persuasive communication strategy. You'll also learn how to analyze your organization's social media channels and marketing strategies to strengthen and maintain your relationship with your customers.
In Reality Check, author Guy Kawasaki provides an informative, witty, and candid discussion of all aspects of starting and maintaining a vibrant enterprise. In this Review, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
What Matters Now is a multi-faceted outline of the challenges and issues organizations must face in order to be primed to flourish in the years ahead. In this Review, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
Get to Aha! shows you how to discover your company’s DNA, implement it, and strive for success. In this Summary, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
To achieve business goals, you need to boost performance and growth in critical areas. Identifying these areas requires instituting the most suitable performance measurement systems. In this course, you'll learn how managing performance can be aided by identifying a performance problem using performance measurement systems. You'll also learn how to work with a key performance indicator (KPI).
Are you a strategic thinker? Do you consider what's going on around you - in your unit, company, industry, and wider business environment? Are you good at visualizing new possibilities or ways of working? Charting the future in today's business environment requires leaders to think strategically like never before. In these times of personal and organizational disruption and change, strategic thinking has become a skill of necessity that will play a key role in determining success or failure. In this course, you'll learn the characteristics of strategic thinking and what a strategic mindset looks like in action. You'll also learn the skills involved in developing two vital aspects of strategic thinking: the creative, innovative, and visionary components that allow you to have and communicate a clear strategic vision and see new possibilities; and the orderly, analytical, and logical skills that help you handle complexity and guide you toward balanced and smart decision making.
Big-picture thinking stretches beyond the short term and considers how an organization can succeed in the long run. A big-picture perspective helps you focus on your organization's future with a long-term perspective without being bogged down by immediate daily demands. In this course, you'll explore how you can get a sense of the bigger picture by reinventing your perspective for a holistic understanding of your organization, identifying the root causes of problems when dealing with complex situations, recognizing factors that influence the big picture, and using big-picture thinking to gain competitive advantage for your organization.
Risk is an inevitable aspect of any business. As a manager, it's important that you mitigate or avoid the potential impact of a risk if it comes to pass, to ensure the long-term survival of your organization. This course focuses on the first step in managing risk, identifying risks to your organization. You'll explore the difference between internal and external risks, and how some risks may actually present a strategic opportunity. You'll also learn how to use some techniques that can help you identify risks and calculate the probability that they will occur, including root cause identification, the Delphi technique, and brainstorming sessions.
Think to Win teaches you how to leverage the power of strategic thinking to your advantage. In this Summary, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
Elevate provides practical tools for forward-thinking CEOs, leaders, and managers to lift their skills in strategy to a higher level. In this Review, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
Winning the Brain Game outlines the common pitfalls people run into when presented with a challenge and offers methods to retrain your brain to approach problems differently. In this Summary, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
How Great Leaders Think offers a selection of contemporary examples and case studies showing you how to think and act like the leader you were destined to be. In this Review, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
It often seems like the whole world is on information overload. Each day, we encounter massive amounts of new false, or dubious information, alongside a steady stream of data that may, or may not, be relevant to our needs. As a leader, your critical thinking skills are essential for deciding what is important and making the best decisions for your organization. This course will help you improve your critical thinking skills. You'll learn about the intake, investigate, and act stages of critical thinking, as well as how to use analytical techniques to assess information. Finally, you'll learn the advantages of keeping an open mind through cognitive flexibility.
It's vital to maintain open, effective communication when working on a team. However, it's all too easy for teams to adopt bad habits. Without realizing how badly it affects your team, you or another team member may communicate in ways that lead to misunderstandings in teamwork, cause unnecessary conflict, keep others from having their say, and prevent collaboration. In this course, you'll learn about different verbal barriers to effective team communication and strategies for overcoming them. But speaking is only one part of communication; effective team leadership is about listening too. So you'll also learn about some active listening techniques that can help you be a better listener when managing teams.
Many organizations have discovered the advantages of using cross-functional teams, such as diversity of skills, perspectives, and experience, to accomplish their goals. While the diversity inherent to these teams can present certain challenges, successfully managing teams is worth the reward. In this course, you'll learn about the benefits of cross-functional teams. You'll also learn about the various development stages of cross-functional teams and the risks at each stage. Finally, you'll learn about the team leadership skills and abilities a cross-functional team leader should have and best practices for the related teamwork.
Effective team leadership in the dynamic technology field is integral to business success, but managing technical teams has unique hurdles. In this course, you'll learn what the hurdles are when working on a team and managing teams in the technology field. You'll cover the qualities of a tech manager, and tips to manage tech teamwork to encourage effective collaboration.
The days of showing up at the office or shopfloor 9-to-5, five days a week, ended for many of us long before the pandemic arrived. Covid accelerated a transformation in where and when we work that was already well underway. A team leader in the 21st century will need to prepare for the future of work by learning to lead hybrid teams, which include a mix of remote and onsite workers, often on different schedules. In this course, you'll learn about becoming a human-centered manager who can build a sense of community in a group of individuals separated by space and time. You'll see how inequities can arise in hybrid teams, and how to avoid them. You'll learn tools and techniques for improving collaboration among physically separated workers. Finally, you'll explore strategies for maintaining high productivity and performance on hybrid teams.
A virtual team can face the same difficulties as other teams, but remote teamwork also has unique challenges. In this course, you'll learn about tactics for managing teams that blend onsite and offsite members across time zones and geography. You'll be introduced to team leadership strategies for overcoming internal conflicts and handling collaboration and communication challenges. Finally, you'll learn how to evaluate and adapt your management style and approach to working on a team that is virtual.
Power Your Tribe provides the core principles you need to guide your team through adapting to relentless internal and external changes. In this Summary, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
Nice Teams Finish Last debunks commonly-held myths about effective teamwork, and shows that playing NICE in the workplace is a recipe for mediocrity. In this Summary, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
9 Powerful Practices of Really Great Teams discusses the nature of effective teams, and explore the habits all successful teams cultivate for best results. In this Summary, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
101 Tips for Telecommuters is an easy-to-use guide for successful telecommuting. In this Summary, we discuss the salient points of the book based on our interpretation of its contents.
No one is an island, and this is particularly true in business. Success is dependent upon skilled, committed individuals coming together to achieve common goals. Building teams is essential to personal and organizational success. Whether your group is permanent or temporary, efficient and effective team leadership is essential. In this course, you'll learn methods for team building and team leadership. You'll also learn strategies for avoiding and mitigating team dysfunction and conflict. Finally, you'll learn how successfully leading teams is integral in the modern marketplace.