Recap of key insights for product managers

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Introduction

It is the first episode of 2026 and the beginning of the 12th year of the Product Mastery Now podcast, the longest running podcast for product managers. I’m recapping some stand-out episodes from 2025 and a couple from the previous years. I’m joined by my daughter and podcast producer, Kaitlin, who has written the podcast shownotes for the last several years. We each selected episodes from 2025 and an episode from the previous 10 years. I share my key takeaways from these episodes and we discuss the innovation quotes the guests shared.

Summary of Concepts Discussed for Product Managers

568: How product operations drives efficiency and growth – with Robert Marten

Robert, at Pendo, explained how to apply the idea of project operations to product management. A product operations capability helps product managers improve their work and consistency, especially when presenting to senior leadership.

Innovation Quote: “Every system is perfectly designed to get the result it gets.” – Edwards Deming

If we don’t get the results we want from a system, the system isn’t broken; it’s delivering what it’s designed to deliver. If you’re not getting what you want from your product management group, try to fix your processes. Sometimes people get blamed when the process needs to fixed.

569: Product innovation insights from non-buyer stakeholders – with Jenn Tuetken

Jenn, director of innovation at Pella, explained how Pella reframed a problem with window installation. Previously the window industry attempted to solve problems with installation by training installers better. Pella instead decided to make their windows easier to install by doing ethnographic research with installers, who are important stakeholders but not customers.

Innovation Quote: “I don’t exactly know where I’m going, but I know how I’m going to get there.” – Boyd Varty, lion tracker

In innovation, we often don’t know the customer’s problem or solution until we do research. Innovation is a process of moving forward and learning along the way.

558: How sketch comedy makes you a better product manager and developer – with John Krewson

John, a software product leader and professional sketch comedy performer, explained how principles from sketch comedy can be applied to product management. Improvisation is a useful skill for innovators, since we don’t always know what the next step is.

Innovation Quote: “We don’t go on because it’s ready. We go on because it’s 11:30.” – Lorne Michaels

This quote refers to Saturday Night Live’s performances, which started at 11:30, whether the team was ready or not. Similarly, a product may have to launch before the team feels it’s fully ready, and deadlines can ensure we keep moving forward.

549: Mastering product innovation, based on 60 years of design insights – with Scot & Walter Herbst

Father and son Walter and Scot Herbst shared insights from their many years of product experience. Today, their design firm Herbst Produkt builds products for other companies. They guarantee that if they don’t come up with a market-winning product, their work will be free. They’re able to do this by deeply understanding the root cause of the problem and considering many alternative solutions. They bring four versions of a minimum viable product to the customer and synthesize the results from testing those into a single optimized product.

Innovation Quote: “There is no prize for solving correctly what proves to be the wrong problem.” – Emeritus Dean Julio Ottino from Northwestern University

Many companies don’t validate their product until they launch it. A clear product process, which considers multiple possible solutions and validates them with customers along the way, ensures we launch a product that actually solves the customer’s problem.

2025 Special: My favorite product innovation conference – with Spike Ross-Corbett and Bill Reid

In this episode, we talked about our favorite speakers at past PDMA Innovation conferences. Highlights include:

Geoff Thatcher’s Experience Design Model: Apply theme park design (attract, trust, inform, internalize, act) to product management.
Marissa Mayer’s 20% Time Story: Google’s AdSense was born from a culture that allows even “bad ideas” to be pursued, powering breakthrough innovation.
DFW Innovation Culture (Outstanding Corporate Innovator Award Winner): Everyone can be an innovator. Cross-org training fosters every-employee innovation, even in public sector contexts.

Innovation Quote: “Someone is going to make your product obsolete. Make sure it’s you.” – Edwin Land

Customer preferences and technology change, and if you’re not close to your customer, someone else who understands their needs better will surpass you.

548: Building a culture of fearless product innovation at Snap-On Tools – with Ben Brenton, PhD

When Ben, Chief Innovation Officer at Snap-On Tools, was first on the podcast in 2017, he was building a culture of innovation by spending four days each week out of the office to observe and talk to customers in their facilities. He brought along other employees from across the organization. In 2025, Ben was in the office two days a month and spent the rest of the time out with customers.

Innovation Quote: “The biggest mistakes in innovation are the products you don’t launch, not the ones you launch and fail.” – Ben Brenton

Products that launch and fail are learning opportunities. Product managers need to embrace failures and learn fast and break things.

522: Stop the stupid using proactive problem solving – with Doug Hall

Doug is the founder of Eureka! Ranch, which helps companies generate ideas, get to know customers, and develop products. Dough uses the phrase “stop the stupid” to remind innovators to get rid of processes that don’t create good outcomes for the team or the customer. In this episode, Doug talked about practical tips for solving problems more effectively.

Innovation Quote: “Ninety-four percent of the problem is the system. Six percent is the worker.” – Edwards Deming

Most problems are system problems, not people problems.

077: Scaling lean product management – with Ash Maurya

Ash, author of Running Lean and Scaling Lean, explained that we need to understand the problem our product is solving for the customer, not just create a product that sounds interesting.

Innovation Quote: “Love the problem, not the solution.” –Ash Maurya

It’s easy for product managers and engineers to get attached to their solution, causing us to be resistant to change or improvement. Instead, we should fall in love with the customer’s problem and deeply understand it and then rapidly iterate and validate our solution.

046: Building a global innovation capability at a large enterprise – with Caterpillar Director of Innovation Ken Gray

Ken, Caterpillar’s global Director of Innovation, explained how Caterpillar structured innovation into three categories:

Core – doing what Caterpillar already does but doing it better.
Adjacent – finding opportunities that are logical extensions of what Caterpillar does today or can be created by spanning business units.
Transformation – entirely new places for Caterpillar to go that you would not expect to be part of their business.

Innovation Quote: “Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.” – Thomas A. Edison

Build the product customers actually want, not something that is just clever or novel. Edison was known for being very good at marketing and at understanding what customers want.

Chad’s Favorite Innovation Quote

“Fall down seven times. Get up eight.” – Japanese proverb

Bio

Chad McAllister, PhD, is a product management professor, practitioner, trainer, and host of the Product Mastery Now podcast. He has 30+ years of professional experience in product and leadership roles across large and small organizations and dynamic startups, and now devotes his time to teaching and helping others improve. He co-authored “Product Development and Management Body of Knowledge: A Guide Book for Product Innovation Training and Certification.” The book distills five decades of industry research and current practice into actionable wisdom, empowering product professionals to innovate and excel. Chad also teaches the next generation of product leaders through advanced graduate courses at institutions including Boston University and Colorado State University and notably re-engineered the Innovation MBA program at the University of Fredericton, significantly broadening its impact. Further, he provides online training for product managers and leaders to prepare for their next career step — see https://productmasterynow.com/.

Thanks!

Thank you for taking the journey to product mastery and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.

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