Network effects are a staple of the digital age: the same principles which make them powerful can be applied to strategy and business model design. — Network effects have become a staple of the digital age, underpinning the value propositions of products as varied as operating systems, eCommerce apps and social networks. Many of the same principles apply to strategy and business model design. What is a network effect?

Creating a strategy is hard: by avoiding these ten traps, it can be a little bit easier. — Developing and executing a winning strategy is hard. It is a messy, iterative and often experimental process. It must unify multiple considerations from the business opportunity, competitive dynamics and game-theoretic assumptions about how markets will respond. However, many businesses fall foul of a more basic pitfall: unintentionally not doing strategy…

Top-down business objectives and bottom-up feedback loops allow a strategy to flow: here’s how to make these mechanisms effective. — An organisation’s ability to define and execute a winning strategy is fundamental to their enduring success. However, “doing strategy” is fraught with challenges. Perhaps the hardest to overcome is cascading a strategy throughout an organisation. For product leaders, this challenge can be particularly acute: how do you create direction and…

Strategy is hard: here is a framework which I hope will make it a little easier. — For leaders within many organisations, “strategy” is one of the most challenging aspects of the role. Aligning a team around a vision and empowering them to deliver is hard. It becomes exponentially harder when you must also align yourself within the shifting sands of a corporate structure. …

The 3 principles I adopted while surfing, which have made me a better product manager. — Ten years ago, I moved to Australia from the UK to start a new job (and take up a new sport). The job, as a strategy consultant, put me on a path which wound its way from mine sites to websites and ultimately my current role as a product manager…

Three questions which capture what is means to be a great product manager. — The product manager is an important role within any technology company. In the most clinical terms, they help organisations discover and build the right products, ultimately seeking to ensure the effort expended by engineers returns a multiple in business value back to their organisation. …

The books which have made a meaningful contribution to my thinking as a product manager. — As a product manager, reading is one of the most productive development activities out there. It helps broaden your perspective, discover different ways of working and allows you to see problems in a new light. …

The benefits and pitfalls of using a North Star to shape your product direction and roadmap — and how to navigate them. — What is a North Star Metric? The North Star Metric is the one metric which best captures the core value your product delivers for your customers and users. It is invaluable in helping product teams remain focused on delivering long-term value in the face of a constant flow of new ideas, feature requests, cool technology and…