Previous posts: How Startups Create & Leverage Knowledge

Product Managers are people who use knowledge to connect company goals with user needs. In order to do that effectively, we need to combine the scientific method and knowledge management practices with business acumen.

As ultimate knowledge workers, Product managers should excel in knowledge acquisition, activation, retention and exploitation.

If you know what to do when you don’t know something – that’s how you win.

🧪 The scientific method is the best tool humanity has to acquire new knowledge. The cycle of observation – hypothesising – verification through experimentation – and results analysis is the most effective way of getting robust, objective insights compared to illusions, assumptions and ideas that aren’t grounded in reality. That’s how Product managers minimise the costs of knowledge acquisition.

If you know something that your team and stakeholders don’t – that’s how you lose.

📗 Knowledge-sharing practices are the only thing that helps those insights not be lost in vain. Any Product Manager should know how to write, visualise, organise documentation, highlight connections and dependencies, and drive communication with a variety of stakeholders. That’s how Product managers maximise knowledge activation and retention.

If you know something that your competitors don’t – that’s your ‘unfair advantage’.

💸 Business acumen is essential for leveraging this newly minted knowledge into product changes that drive specific, measurable results. That’s how Product managers exploit knowledge to drive revenue.

In the next post, I look into the central concept of the scientific method – the hypothesis – and the myths around it that dominate the product management domain.

Next post: The True Meaning and Value of Hypothesis