Blogs

The Human Element in Data: 3 TED Talks to Transform Your Market Research

By Kailiang Fu posted 8 days ago
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The Human Element in Data: 3 TED Talks to Transform Your Market Research Read Time: 4 minutes By Kailiang Fu The Qualitative "Why" in a Quantitative World As Product Managers, we are often obsessed with "The Data." We track conversion funnels, churn coefficients, and engagement heatmaps with religious fervor. But data is just a digital shadow of human behavior—it tells us what people are doing, but it rarely explains why. To innovate, we must look beyond the spreadsheet. These four TED talks explore the "Human Element"—the invisible, often irrational, and deeply personal motivations that transform raw data into a roadmap for successful products. ...
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Why Are Abstractions Important in Product Design? Can They Inspire Your Thinking?

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 13 days ago
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Why Are Abstractions Important in Product Design? Can They Inspire Your Thinking? Read Time: 3 Minutes Why Are Abstractions Important in Product Design? Can They Inspire Your Thinking? Simplicity is not the absence of clutter; that’s a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object or product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That’s not simple. Abstraction is the process of capturing the essential characteristics of a system, object, or concept to create a high-level representation of its underlying functions, processes, and components, with a focus on functionality. ...
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Stage-Gate®: The “Official” 2026 Version

By Robert Cooper posted 15 days ago
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Stage-Gate®: The "Official" 2026 Version Read Time: 10 minutes By Robert G. Cooper The Stage-Gate® New Product Process For over forty years, the Stage-Gate® process has served as a framework for managing new product development (NPD). [1] Around the world, organizations rely on Stage-Gate® not only as a structured roadmap for managing innovation but also as a proven system that consistently transforms their best ideas into profitable, winning products. Few business processes have had such a lasting impact on corporate innovation performance—see Figure 1. [2] Figure 1. The major milestones of new product development, displayed ...
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Speed vs Quality when using AI in Discovery

By James Morris posted 15 days ago
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Speed vs Quality When Using AI in Discovery Read Time: 4 minutes Product Discovery Fundamentals Written by Jim Morris For many years, I revered the Sprint book for finding ideas in a fast, five day, easy to follow recipe. The Sprint book inspired teams to get out of the office and test their ideas quickly. After running design sprints, I saw a pattern…teams got speed, but not quality…usually because we weren’t anchored to a real customer problem and a business outcome. It ended up feeling like we were going through the motions of discovering new ideas but not innovating anything useful. AI also accelerates a design cycle but this even greater ...
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Ted Talks on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Future of Business

By Rose Klimovich posted 29 days ago
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Ted Talks on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Future of Business Read Time: 3 Minutes AI Powered Business Reinvention by PwC Click here to Watch This TED talk is a compilation of speakers talking about AI in business. A few key points: Look at AI to reinvent and rethink how your business works rather than just automation of a few tasks. Other new technologies have caused disruption in the workplace. The difference here is how fast this is happening and how fast the technology itself is evolving. To get people to use this to benefit the organization, help them overcome their fears. Make sure they have the right skills ...
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‘China Speed’: Accelerated Product Development the Chinese Way

By Robert Cooper posted 29 days ago
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‘China Speed’: Accelerated Product Development the Chinese Way Read Time: 5 minutes By Robert G. Cooper From the author: Colleagues and clients have been asking me about China Speed—how the Chinese are able to develop and launch new products so quickly. Are they doing something really novel here, or are they just employing Western methods, such as Agile or parallel processing, but more effectively? Or is AI their secret? This article, written with the help of Artificial Intelligence, probes those questions and comes to some interesting and alarming conclusions. Read on…. What is China Speed? In innovation and new product development ...
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The Empathy Trap: Why Focusing Only on Customers Holds Your Product Back

By Keyuri Anand posted 01-07-2026
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The Empathy Trap: Why Focusing Only on Customers Holds Your Product Back Read Time: 7 minutes By Parul Jain (SF Chapter) and Keyuri Anand (Texas Chapter) Empathy isn’t new to product managers. It’s often one of the first things they learn: understand users, uncover needs, and build experiences that make life better. But somewhere along the way, customer empathy became a trap. Product managers became so focused on customers that they lost sight of the larger system that keeps a product alive. Great products need more than customer insight. They need alignment across business goals, leadership expectations, technical realities, and organizational ...
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To Design Unique Concepts….Change your mindset!

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 05-21-2025
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To Design Unique Concepts….Change your mindset! Read Time: 3 minutes Although analytical thinking is powerful, like scripted processing, it proceeds in a linear fashion…and often fails to meet the challenges of novelty and change.” Leonard Mlodinow Did you run out of ideas? As human beings, we get used to "the way things are" really fast. Maybe it is time to stretch your mind. A mind that is elastic and fluid is permeable to endless possibilities. Such a mind is characterized by handling ambiguity and contradiction, opposites fit, trust in the power of imagination, and connecting disparate ideas to generate novelty. The following TED talks ...
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Creativity and the Collective Mind

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 03-13-2025
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Creativity and the Collective Mind Read Time: 3 Minutes Creative teams are dynamic. Diversity of talents is important, but it is not enough. Different ways of thinking can be an obstacle to creativity. Creative teams find ways of using their differences as strengths, not weaknesses.” – Ken Robinson Is your team creative? Do you find yourself searching for innovative ideas? Is your team capable of innovation and functions as an efficient ensemble in pursuit of new products or services? As product managers, can we promote the collective and creative mind in design teams? The following TED talks challenge our views regarding mental spaces, diversity ...
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Ideation and the Designer's Mindset – TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 12-09-2024
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Ideation and the Designer's Mindset – TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights Read Time: 2 Minutes Ideation and the Designer’s Mindset People ask me, 'Don't you ever run out of ideas?' Well, in the first place, I don't use ideas. Every time I have an idea, it's too limiting and usually turns out to be a disappointment. But I haven't run out of curiosity. – Robert Rauschenberg Designers embrace curiosity, imagination, flexibility, and a user-centric perspective when designing products or services. In their quest for new concepts that embrace uniqueness, differentiation, and meaning, designers open mental spaces through thinking critically. The ...
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Leadership TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights

By Rose Klimovich posted 12-06-2024
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Leadership Ted Talks with Practitioner Insights Read Time: 2 Minutes The anti-CEO playbook by Hamdi Ulukaya Click Here to Watch Profit, money, shareholders: these are the priorities of most business leaders today. But at what cost? Chobani founder Hamdi Ulukaya calls for an end to the business playbook of the past and shares his vision for a new, "anti-CEO playbook" that prioritizes people over profits. This is the new way to win. Practitioner Points: People First : Ulukaya emphasizes the importance of prioritizing employees and community over profits. A strong, inclusive culture leads to better business outcomes. ...
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Sustainable Product Design - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 11-22-2024
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Sustainable Product Design - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights Read Time: 2 Minutes Sustainable Product Design “If it can’t be reduced, reused, repaired, rebuilt, refurbished, refinished, resold, recycled, or composted, then it should be restricted, designed or removed from production.” – Pete Seeger Can we design products considering environmental, social, and economic impacts during the use life cycle? Can we ensure our products do not lose value at the end of their life cycle? Circular product design means designing products that do not create waste or pollution and allow for the recirculation or reuse of materials, ...
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Relating Portfolio Management to Strategy

By Salvador Gonzalez-Garcia posted 10-03-2024
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Relating Portfolio Management to Strategy When asking small and medium enterprises about how they select their portfolio, it can be surprising to observe that the CEO’s intuition is a common “method” to select the projects in which they will invest. According to PDMA’s Body of Knowledge (Anderson et al, 2020) the previous approach can be seen as a “top-down” method for portfolio management. (Anderson et al, 2020) also propose the idea of strategic buckets as a categorization method to assign resources after the types of projects (or buckets) that contribute to the organizational strategies as defined. Strategic agility can be defined as the ...
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An innovation culture or a culture of continuity

By Jeffrey Phillips posted 08-19-2024
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An innovation culture or a culture of continuity Read Time: 8 Minutes I've been reading and thinking a lot lately about what is described as a "culture of innovation". While I would like to think that such an animal exists, the more skeptical side of me doubts it. I think a culture of innovation is kind of like a unicorn: it would be cool if it existed, and some people claim to have seen one, but when you get up close it's just a normal animal that happens to be missing a horn. In other words, we see what we want or hope to see. Every business has a culture. Let's start with base principles and agree on that. Another base principle is that most ...
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TED Talks on Team Leadership

By Rose Klimovich posted 08-13-2024
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TED Talks on Team Leadership Read Time: 2 Minutes Lead like the Great Conductors Click Here to Watch Watch Time: 20 Minutes In this video Itay Talgam talks about leading a team the way a conductor leads an orchestra – producing music out of chaos. Practitioner Points: Different leaders have different leadership styles. These styles effect how a team operates, how team members work together and what the team can accomplish. The leader needs to lead. But a great team involves not only the leader but the individuals who are part of the team and how they react to the leader. The leader needs to be aware of how to get the most from ...
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Simplicity in Design - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 05-02-2024
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Simplicity in Design - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away. Antonine de Saint-Exupery How do we make things as simple, inexpensive, functional, and freely interconnected as possible? Simplicity in product design is the art of creating intuitive, efficient, and easy-to-use products. It involves stripping away unnecessary complexities and focusing on the essential features and functions that fulfill the user's needs. A simple design prioritizes clarity, consistency, and minimalism, enhancing user experience and reducing ...
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Creativity - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 12-20-2023
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Creativity - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights Read Time: 2 Minutes The Power of Imagination Designing products and services involves deeply understanding consumers’ beliefs, attitudes, and inner selves as product managers; the journey to a fine and competitive product is a function of user insights, competitiveness, value-added, differentiation, and effective execution. Unlike artificial intelligence and other technology, people possess a faculty computers can’t match: the power to imagine and act on new possibilities. Our unique ability is imagination. Meet the imagination worker: those who think creatively to envision a different future and ...
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Motivating Teams: Ted Talks with Practitioner

By Rose Klimovich posted 12-20-2023
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Motivating Teams - TEDTalks with Practitioner Insights Read Time: 2 Minutes The Puzzle of Motivation by Dan Pink Click here to Watch Keeping team members motivated is challenging for leaders. Looking at the science of teams, Dan Pick offers some ways to motivate people. Dan Pink’s 2009 TED talk uses humor and personal experience to explain how the business model of carrot and stick stifles motivation rather than driving it. Pink explains that for more complicated problems needing cognitive skills, giving the team leader flexibility and adapting your motivational model to more intrinsic motivation is the best way to keep your team driven. ...
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Function Analysis: Foundation to Concept Development

By Carlos M. Rodriguez posted 11-13-2023
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Function Analysis: Foundation to Concept Development Read Time: 5 minutes The details are details. They make the product. The connections, the connections, the connections. In the end, it will be these details that give the product life. Charles Eames Consumers purchase products because they can perform specific functions. For example, a consumer will buy a cellular phone because it accomplishes the “facilitates communication” function. A customer will purchase a lawn mower because it performs the function of “cutting grass.” These are known as the basic functions. Products and services generally perform basic and secondary functions ...
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Improving Innovation Decision Making

By David Matheson posted 10-16-2023
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Read Time: 2 Minutes When asked “How would you know a good decision if you saw one”, audience members at PDMA’s Inspire Innovation conference September 18, 2023 in New Orleans said things like “Alignment with goal and vision” and “Aligned with expectations” and “True alignment (not just superficial agreement)” – are you getting a theme? Many people had breakthroughs: getting commitment was the part of a good decision and the result of a process that could be engineered! Many also realized that their current process framework (Phase Gate) wasn’t set up to deliver good decisions, resulting in frustration in this area, and were inspired that there might be ...
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