Behind any great product is a dumpster full of mediocre products. The one you see is the result of tiresome work that you often do not see. It isn’t just that the creators are better than average (though that is probably true too), but rather that they set their goal higher and work harder, longer and with more resolve. Creating greatness is an inefficient task. Behind the record breaking four minute mile there were four years of training. No one remembers the first man to run a 4:10 mile. Breaking 4:00 takes four years, but it is remembered for 400.
creating excellencI got to go on a tour of the Pixar studios this week. A friend & former colleague now works there and invited me for lunch. The campus is awesome – everything about it exudes the excellence you would expect from Pixar. I loved seeing first hand the the strength of their culture. The company doesn’t just create great stories, but it falls in love with its own characters. They are present everywhere on campus in the form of sculpture, paintings, lego, etc. That shouldn’t be surprising if you’ve ever spotted hidden references in one Pixar film to a previous film – they like to reference their successes. One thing really stood out to me, though. As I entered the campus I walked past a giant logo for Cars 2. I didn’t even think to take a picture of it, but found one online so you can see what I’m
“I am here NOT to sell what I produce but I am here to solve a set of customer problems that I want to own.” – Ranjay Gurati, Harvard Business School This is a great way of looking at product management. Our goal isn’t to build something and sell it. Our goal isn’t even to build what customers want. Our goal is to take ownership of a certain set of problems for a certain set of people and then solve them in the best way possible. Ideally in doing so, you create enough value for them that they can afford to then pay you for your services, which is how you put bread on your table. I read a quote from a former Googler recently that explained how their job in search was to solve every customer problem. If the customer couldn’t spell, it was the product managers problem, if the
We’ve been doing a lot of research at Hearsay Social about the value of local fans on social media. As part of this – we sponsored a study by Mainstay Salire who found that a local fan is worth 40 x a corporate fans in terms of engagement. Reposted from the Hearsay Social Blog – see the original post here Earlier today, independent research group Mainstay Salire released a white paper comparing the fans of corporate and local Facebook pages. According to Mainstay’s data, the typical Facebook post from a local Page reaches five times the percentage of fans as a corporate post, and eight times as many of the fans reached will engage with that post. (Engagement could mean anything from viewing a photo or watching a video to clicking a link, liking, commenting, or sharing.) Combining those two factors—five times reach and eight times engagement—Mainstay concludes that a local fan is 40