Audible.com

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I signed up for audible.com yesterday just to try it out. I also wanted to review the

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses book as I had no patience to read it the second time. I was pleasantly surprised by how effective audible.com is. Maybe my experience was so positive as I had already read the book. 

The only biggest issue with the audible books is you cannot purchase them within the iPhone apps. I am sure this has to do with Apple insisting that publishers pay 30% cut. I had to buy the book using a website and then download it to iPhone, which takes an effort. Remember my earlier post about reducing friction in user experience.

After wasting time politicking in my new role as a GM at a different kind of company, I am back to writing my book. I am hoping to start publishing some material from the book as blog articles. This will help me get some valuable feedback as well as generate buzz for the book.

Data Driven Product Management

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After a long time, I was finally able to find some time for my book (data driven product management). I now have 108 pages of content, ready to be published. I think I am 70% there. Now time to figure out, how to publish on Amazon.

Recommended books for Product Management

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I have been in various roles during my career (software industry), but product management was by far the toughest. Unlike various roles, where practice can increase skills, product management requires true blend of art and science.

These books will not only help you increase your knowledge, but also provide you various frameworks and mental tools, to help improve your product management skills.

Interaction design:

• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
•  About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design
•  Don't Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability, 2nd Edition

Marketing:

•  Marketing Management (14th Edition) 
•  Data-Driven Marketing: The 15 Metrics Everyone in Marketing Should Know
•  Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

Product Management:

•  Inspired: How To Create Products Customers Love
•  Take Charge Product Management: Take Charge of Your Product Management Development; Tips,
• Tactics, and Tools to Increase Your Effectiveness as a Product Manager
•  The Product Manager's Desk Reference

 Entrepreneurship & Customer Development:

•  The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win
•  The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
•  Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers

Strategy and Innovation:

•  Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
•  Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors
•  The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business

Pricing:

•  The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing (5th Edition)

Metrics and Testing:

•  Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer 
•  Landing Page Optimization: The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions

These books should at least get you started in the exiting field of product management. As discussed earlier, product management is blend of art and science, so no amount of reading can substitute for your inherent product passion and hard work. Even though fluid intelligence plays a role and is often seen as the common factor among successful product managers, I believe that these skills can be developed over time. These books are part of long series of articles I plan to write about product management. This is an effort both to guide prospective product managers as well as learn through interactions and critical thinking which comes through writing.