Slides from my talk at Vancouver ProductCamp 2020

1. how to do product
innovation
by Lena Sesardic
ProductCamp Vancouver 2020

2. AGENDA
● Team values
● Ideal team composition
● Some approaches
● Some techniques
● Customer outreach
● Talking to customers
● Pitching
● Q&A

3. TEAM VALUES
● Be bold
● Try new things
● Don’t fear rejection/failure
● Challenge each other
● No hard feelings
● Move fast, fail fast
● “Strong opinions, loosely held”
● Have fun

4. IDEAL team composition
● Entrepreneur in Residence *
● Product person *
● UX person *
● Engineering person *
● Marketing person
● Sales person
● Customer success person
● Executive sponsor, C-suite *

5. some approaches
● Design Sprint
● Basecamp 6-week “bets”
● 4-week per product idea, investment confidence
1 2 3
Product idea
Confidence for
investment

6. some techniques
● Product brief w/ sub-problems
● Category & motivations (Bryan Balfour’s approach)
● Transform sub-problems w/ customer data (Four Steps to
Epiphany)
● Beachhead opportunity
● Fat marker sketches / Balsamiq
● Whiteboarding / ideation
● Hacking thinking (hack in a week)

7. CUSTOMER OUTREACH
● Warm contacts
● Warm introductions
● Cold outreach (email, LinkedIn)
● Have a conversation
● Events
● / blogs
● “Can you point me in the right direction?”
● Create content (articles, blog posts, webinars)
● Give back

8. talking to customers
● Behavioural interviews
● Customer pain (anchoring, not zooming in too soon)
● Individuals/companies/problems characteristics
● Current alternatives
● Makeshift solutions ($$)
● Early adopters
● Next steps

9. pitching
● Look at great pitch decks (e.g. Airbnb)
● Why this, why now, why you
● Use motivations
● Pitch deck per sub-problem/role
● Trial & tweak
● Stand up
● “Head nod test”
● Invest or kill?

10. pitching

11. Q&A