top of page


Catalytics Plus Analytics: When Numbers Run Out of Answers
Data analytics has become the default language of product decision-making. Every product manager we know spends at least part of their...

Paul Peterson
Aug 182 min read


Catalytic Customers and the Real Opportunity Space
Most teams treat the “opportunity space” like it’s a chart you can fill in with the right research. Field the surveys, conduct the...

Paul Peterson
Aug 92 min read


"The Customer is Always Right" is Wrong
For more than a century, businesses have been told to treat “the customer as always right.” Coined by retailers like Harry Gordon...

Paul Peterson
Jul 283 min read


The Real Bottleneck Isn’t Ideas—It’s Everything After
Ideas aren’t the problem. Most product teams have more than they can manage. Whiteboards overflow, frameworks stack neatly, and someone...

Paul Peterson
Jul 212 min read


Profit, Clarity and Catalytic Customers
At its core, a business has one job: to generate profit. That profit can come from growing revenue, lowering costs, or—ideally—both....

Paul Peterson
Jul 62 min read


You Don’t Need More Interviews. You Need Better Ones.
A lot of product teams are doing the right things, at least on paper. They’re shipping regularly, talking to users repeatedly, running...

Paul Peterson
Jul 42 min read


Sometimes Product Needs Insight Before It Needs Research
Most product teams aren’t starved for data. They’ve got usage dashboards, survey tools, helpdesk logs, and analytics stacks. And in many...

Paul Peterson
May 213 min read


The High Price of Getting It Almost Right
When we talk about product failure in tech, we tend to picture the big blowups. The high-profile launches that crater on impact. The...

Paul Peterson
May 183 min read


Future-Proofing is Great. Until the Future Doesn't Cooperate.
Spend enough time in strategy sessions and it comes up sooner or later: We need to future-proof this. It’s well-intentioned. Smart, even....

Paul Peterson
May 92 min read


“Wait. What?” The Spark Behind Real Innovation
We like to think of innovation as a process: structured, sequenced, neatly mapped. But more often, it begins with a glitch in the matrix....

Paul Peterson
Apr 302 min read


The Myth of the Perfect Product, or Why Progress Beats Perfection
At some point, every product manager has felt it: The impossible weight of building the "perfect product." Perfect in functionality....

Paul Peterson
Apr 272 min read


What if Fear Is the Real Reason You’re Stuck?
What if the real reason your innovation efforts stall has nothing to do with strategy? Nothing to do with budget. Nothing to do with...

Paul Peterson
Apr 242 min read


The Rebel Mindset as a Strategic Asset
Most teams say they want bold thinking. Most organizations don’t reward it. Not when the roadmap is already full. Not when the metrics...

Paul Peterson
Apr 192 min read


“Product Owner?” That’s Cute.
Somewhere along the winding road of Agile transformation and Silicon Valley job title inflation, we decided to start calling people...

Paul Peterson
Apr 183 min read


You’re Holding It All Together. We Haven’t Forgotten That.
There’s a particular kind of tired we see on the faces of so many product managers. It’s not just from late nights or back-to-back...

Paul Peterson
Apr 182 min read


How to Develop More Effective User Stories
In Agile product development, User Stories are a cornerstone for delivering features that delight users and drive business growth. But...

Paul Peterson
Mar 283 min read


How Insights Teams Can Become the Innovation Engine Product Teams Need
Innovation is often seen as the domain of product teams whose charter is to develop, refine, and launch offerings that drive competitive...

Paul Peterson
Mar 193 min read


It's Not What You Do, It's How You Fit
In tech product management, the emphasis is often on building something new , something better , something that outperforms competitors...

Paul Peterson
Feb 173 min read


What We Mean When We Talk About Innovation
Innovation is often misconceived as the singular act of creating and launching new products. In reality, it is a complex, multifaceted...

Paul Peterson
Feb 74 min read


Time to Get Out of Your Comfort Zone
As most product managers know all too well, the pressure to "play it safe" is pervasive. After all, stakeholders demand measurable...

Paul Peterson
Jan 313 min read
bottom of page
