Product: Take Action Now
Every chapter of my book Wind In Your Sails: Vital Strategies That Accelerate Your Entrepreneurial Growth ends with the section Take Action Now. Here are my actions for your products.
Murray Goldberg Product Lessons Learned
Serial entrepreneur Murray Goldberg created one of the world’s first online learning management systems (LMS) for universities and corporations. After seeing exponential growth, Murray exited the company he created, only to discover an entirely new industry with unique needs for training and learning management systems. Marine Learning Systems is Murray’s third company. There he brings a wealth of product knowledge, software engineering expertise, and entrepreneurship to a global problem that affects anyone who travels the world’s oceans.
Doug Bunker Innovation Lessons Learned
For Doug Bunker, the founding sales and marketing leader of Clevest, the third time was indeed the charm. With co-founders Tom Ligocki and Arthur Lo, they set out to transform workforce automation and mobile dispatch for small and mid-sized organizations.
Where’s the Skim Milk?
Twenty years ago, Starbucks started expanding north into Canada and Vancouver was one of the first cities to see a proliferation of Starbucks stores. At the time, I was looking for a coffee store where there was skim milk (non fat milk for my non-Canadian friends) on the counter. I was tired of coffee shops where I had to constantly ask for cold skim milk for my coffee. Fortunately, Starbucks included skim milk on the counter in every single one of their stores. For me, this was the key differentiator that made me a Starbucks customer for the last 20 years.
The last two weeks, skim milk has been disappearing from Vancouver Starbucks stores. Every time I get a Starbucks coffee, which is usually more than once every day, I have to ask for skim milk so that I can add it to my coffee. When I do, a four litre jug is retrieved from the back and put on top of the counter for me to open and pour into my coffee. Not only has Starbucks taken away the key differentiator that made me become a customer in the first place, they make the experience of getting what I want unpleasant.
Go To Market Strategy and Meanings
This past Saturday I attended Product Camp Vancouver 2014. This “unconference” brings together some of the top product management talent in Vancouver, along with some fabulous speakers. Participants suggest topics and ideas. Then people volunteer to lead those sessions.
When I arrived Saturday morning, the topic “Go To Market Strategy and Meanings” had many votes, but no facilitator. In the spirit of an unconference, I volunteered to lead the session. Before I knew it, I was in front of a room of fifty product managers leading the discussion.