Solving Product

“Solving Product lays out the territory, helps you see where you are, and gets you back on track when you’re in the ditch.” – Amanda Robinson, Product Manager at Salesfloor - Solving Product isn’t your typical business book. It’s not a book that was written to be read front to back, then simply put away. Solving Product was carefully designed to help product teams and entrepreneurs reveal the gaps in their business models, find new avenues for growth, and systematically overcome their next hurdles by leveraging the greatest resource at their disposal: customers. No matter where you are in the product growth cycle—at the idea stage, at maturity, or somewhere in between—Solving Product will help you: - Gain clarity: Reveal gaps and blindsides, know exactly what challenges you’re facing; - Overcome blockers: Lay out clear action plans to fix the most pressing issues and get your business moving forward, fast; - Ignite growth: Find new approaches to get your product growing. The book contains more than 25 case studies and actionable advice from hundreds of product leaders and customer research experts. Solving Product offers a simple, unique, and wildly powerful business compass. It’s a book you’ll find yourself going back to, time and time again.

Practice your product design and UX skills. Prepare for your next job interview. Redesign the NYC metrocard system. Design a dashboard for a general practitioner. Redesign an ATM. Learn how to solve and present exercises like these, that top startups use to interview designers for product design and UI/UX roles. Today top companies are looking for business-minded designers who are not just focused on visuals. With this book you can practice this kind of mindset, prepare for job interview, learn how to interview other designers and find concepts for projects for your portfolio. What will you learn from this book: Prepare for the design interview -- prepare for the design exercise and learn more about how tech companies hire product designers. Improve your portfolio -- use product challenges to showcase in your porfolio instead of unsolicited visual redesigns. Step up your design career -- practice your product design skills to become a better designer and prepare for your next career move. Interview designers -- learn how to interview designers to evaluate their skills in the most efficient and scalable way. What's inside? A 7-step framework for solving product design exercises 30+ examples of exercises similar to exercises used by Google, Facebook, Amazon etc. 5 full solutions for product design exercises 5 short interviews with design leaders that worked at Apple, Google, Pinterest, IDEO etc.

Get from Idea to Product/Market Fit in B2B. The world has changed. Nowadays, there are more companies building B2B products than there’s ever been. Products are entering organizations top-down, middle-out, and bottom-up. Teams and managers control their budgets. Buyers have become savvier and more impatient. The case for the value of new innovations no longer needs to be made. Technology products get hired, and fired faster than ever before. The challenges have moved from building and validating products to gaining adoption in increasingly crowded and fragmented markets. This, requires a new playbook. The second edition of Lean B2B is the result of years of research into B2B entrepreneurship. It builds off the unique Lean B2B Methodology, which has already helped thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators around the world build successful businesses. In this new edition, you’ll learn: - Why companies seek out new products, and why they agree to buy from unproven vendors like startups - How to find early adopters, establish your credibility, and convince business stakeholders to work with you - What type of opportunities can increase the likelihood of building a product that finds adoption in businesses - How to learn from stakeholders, identify a great opportunity, and create a compelling value proposition - How to get initial validation, create a minimum viable product, and iterate until you're able to find product/market fit This second edition of Lean B2B will show you how to build the products that businesses need, want, buy, and adopt.

Based on a broad range of case studies, Organization and Management Problem Solving is an insightful text designed to improve the application of organization theory and systems thinking in teaching and practice. This book illustrates the five key themes in the nature of organization and managementa'technical, structural, psychosocial, managerial, and culturala'through the analysis of measured incidents tested by students. A clear theoretical framework supports the case studies, allowing the text to have practical relevance to contemporary settings and to be recognized as a model for describing, analyzing, and responding to organization and management problems. The model integrates the thinking of many writers on organization and problem solving including Ackoff, Blake, and Mouton; Schein, Kast, and Rosenweign; and Mitroff and Lippitt. The approach eliminates causal conditions and emphasizes responsive problem solving. Theory is applied and expanded as needed to a broader social context, engaging the reader in a thorough understanding of the nature and development of organization theory and problem solving. This book is relevant to consultants, academics, and professional managers in a number of settings (academic, military, business organizations, and research institutes) and disciplines (including development and change, management, human resources, social psychology, communication, sociology, and psychology).

Software for complex problem solving can dazzle people with advanced features and alluring visuals, but when actually put to use it often disappoints and even frustrates users. This software rarely follows the user's own work methods, nor does it give people the degree of control and choice that they truly need. This book presents a groundbreaking approach to interaction design for complex problem solving applications. The author uses her vast field experience to present a new way of looking at the whole process, and treats complex problem solving software and web applications as a distinct class with its own set of usefulness demands and design criteria. This approach highlights integrated interactions rather than discrete actions, clearly defines what makes problem solving complex, and explores strategies for analyzing, modeling, and designing for exploratory inquiries. ·In depth case studies ranging from IT troubleshooting to marketing analysis to risk assessments in healthcare show exactly where and what goes wrong in real world activities and how to improve them. ·Presents a system and framework for analyzing complex work and takes the mystery out of eliciting patterns of work and their meanings. ·Offers new perspectives for support and new design strategies for building the right models into programs so that they effectively address users' dynamic work. ·Allows designers to turn findings into useful designs for problems that require users to create new knowledge but with no one right answer and with many methods of reaching solutions.

"Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of "achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people". Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams"--

Everything your students need to solve problems, manage change and deliver innovation using the Creative Problem Solving framework This text is the most comprehensive and contemporary overview and description of Creative Problem Solving (CPS) available today. Friendly and highly practical for a broad base of researchers and practitioners, the book provides a framework, language, guidelines, and set of easy-to-use tools for understanding challenges, generating ideas, and transforming promising ideas into action. New and Hallmark Features The authors expanded their emphasis on CPS as a flexible, dynamic process that enables users to select and apply CPS tools, components, and stages in a meaningful way that meets their actual needs. A framework for problem solving that has been tested and applied across ages, settings, and cultures allows readers to apply a common approach to process across many traditional "boundaries." Specific objectives in each chapter provide a clear focus for instruction or independent learning. Practical case studies introduced at the beginning of each chapter and then completed as a "rest of the story" toward the end of the chapter provide an application anchor for the reader. New enhanced graphics: Updated and refreshed tables, figures, and illustrative images provide "pictures" to go along with the authors' words. A companion Web site with additional resources can be found at www.sagepub.com/Isaksen3e.

Summary: "Today, the majority of engineers in many varied fields must utilize CAD/CAM systems in their work, but due to the increasing number and sophistication of programs and methods available, no one engineer can possibly be an expert in all of them. This book will help, by offering a detailed and comprehensive survey of all the leading computer-aided engineering methods, effectively providing a map to this sometimes confusing world. It is especially written for design and production engineers practicing in the modern industrial environment, where design, analysis, manufacturing planning, production planning and computer controlled equipment programming are all governed by CAD/CAM systems. The authors, who are engineering professors as well as IT professionals, clearly explain concepts, approaches, principles, and practical methods in purposefully IT-jargon free language, so that engineers will not get lost in a tangle of acronyms. It profides basic theoretical background and examines the relative value of various competitive computer-aided engineering methods, so that engineers will feel confident in making design tool choices, without having to become specialists in the development issues surrounding each system"--Back cover.