Hello friends, just wanted to share some links I read recently on subjects related to product management and product marketing. I liked them a lot, and thought you might too.

1. What You Can Learn From Trader Joe's

   Seth Godin, the popular author and speaker, blogs about lessons you can learn from Trader Joe's - one of my favorite businesses. I recommend their Pizza Mascarpone - Yum!

2. Customer Obsession at Amazon.com

   Ever wonder why Amazon.com is so successful? Peter Abilla, a former Amazon.com insider, blogs about one of the reasons - "Customer Obsession".

3. On Writing Better MRDs

   Scott Sehlhorst's excellent analysis of my recent tips (here and here) on writing better MRDs. Scott nicely categorizes the tips and offers some strong counter-points. Check it out.

4. Don't Give In to Feature Demands!

Ever felt overwhelmed by all the sundry feature requests coming at you from various directions? This blog post by Kathy Sierra provides a nice insight into handling them.

5. Why Product Managers Are Critical To Success

   James Shore, an agile development guru, writes on why product managers are critical to the success of a software company - even one that follows agile development. I couldn't agree more - and you know I'm not biased!

E-N-J-O-Y...

Posted by michael at 11:20 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | 2 Comments | Post Comment

I was planning to write a new article this weekend, but got swamped with the day job. Ahhh... life at a startup in Silicon Valley! :)

Never one to leave my faithful readers empty handed (!) - I decided to share the following.

Interesting & Useful Links
These are some links that I read recently and liked, and thought you might too:

1. Death By Risk Aversion

   One of my favorite bloggers, Kathy Sierra writes about how "risk aversion" is the biggest innovation killer and how to overcome it. Check it out.

2. Demos That Spark

   Amit Bendov, former VP of Marketing at ClickSoftware, blogs about how to do powerful product demos. Mostly applies to B2B software, but pretty useful for any demo.

3. Market Segmentation or Senseless Mistake?

   Another one of my favorite bloggers, Scott Sehlhorst writes about how Microsoft does market segmentation for its Visual Studio product. Nice read.

4. How to Remain Sane

Guy Kawasaki, a popular author and venture capitalist, writes about how to remain sane and not let your competition drive you crazy. Good stuff.

5. How Bill Gates Works

   We may not be as rich as Bill Gates, but we sure can work like him! Entertaining Fortune article written by the man himself.

There you have it - five cool links.

Announcements
I'm also happy to announce that I will be writing two series of articles on my blog, in response to popular demand (okay, two of my friends suggested them!):

1. Ten Commandments of Product Management

   High-Tech Product Management boiled down to its core essence. I'm not a very religious person, but the title sounded very good. Depending on how it goes, I may change it to "Nine Commandments" or "Eleven Commandments" - please don't be offended!

2. Sun Tzu on Product Strategy

   Sun Tzu (circa 6th century, BC) was a Chinese military strategist who wrote a very influential book called The Art of War. The book is about military strategy - but the principles apply to many other areas. In this series, I will focus on what we can learn about product strategy from The Art of War.

I know you can barely contain your excitement about these articles - me neither! :)

Posted by michael at 10:48 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0) | 3 Comments | Post Comment