Product management work changes from company to company and from one industry to the next. A key factor influencing the work is the size of the organization. Product managers at a large company like Microsoft will have a different scope of responsibilities than a product manager in a small startup.  To explore these differences and other aspects of product management, I interviewed Ellen Chisa, a product manager who has worked for companies of different scales. We got connected with each other because we were both listed among the top-40 product management influencers by Product Management Year in Review. Her educational background is in engineering and she has started her MBA at the Harvard Business School. She was a program manager at Microsoft (which is a “product manager” at other companies) and also a product manager for Kickstarter. She is currently the VP of Product at a startup, Lola Travel, in Boston. In the past she taught product management courses and workshops, including the product management bootcamp at General Assembly.

In this interview, you will learn:

* Differences working as a product manager in large and small companies.

* What is rewarding about the work in organizations of very different sizes.

* The challenges product managers can expect based on size of the company.

During the discussion with Ellen I made an error attributing the quote, “If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late,” to the wrong person. Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn Founder, made this important statement. My apologies to Reid!

 

Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators

Summary of questions discussed:

What was most rewarding in your work as product (program) manager at Microsoft? At Microsoft the role is aligned with marketing and involves getting into the technical details for what should be developed. Their product managers must have very good technical skills. The most rewarding aspect of working in a large organization with a large customer base is the number of people your work impacts. You may be making a small change to a product but that change impacts a very large number of users, making their day better. Also, you get a lot of practice with the fundamentals of product management because you have time to go through the process the way it is supposed to be done, considering the problem more deeply, who are the stakeholders, who do I need to coordinate with, etc.

What are some challenges product managers face in large enterprises? I never could tell the impact I was making in the organization versus other product managers. The scope of control is limited. The requirements are pretty specific by the time they get to a product manager. Also, I would see some stakeholders infrequently compared to a start-up environment. For example, I would have a legal review once a year and not coordinate with the legal team outside of that review.

Now for the other side of the spectrum – what is your role at the startup and what do you like? The startup is Lola Travel. I started as an intern as part of my Harvard Business School MBA program. My technical and business background was what they needed. The role is so much fun because you have large impacts on the product. We rapidly iterate product versions, getting customer feedback between each one. This creates a near-continuous feedback loop which I find rewarding. I see how my work is directly making a difference in the product and to  customers.

What are the challenges working in the startup?  I tend to be a perfectionist and have to decide what are the most important aspects of a product to address and which ones must wait. It is also a balance between deciding when some part of the product is “good enough” and when another one must be excellent. We try to keep the focus on the user when making these decisions and judging what wi...

I have a great guest, Rebecca Kalogeris, to help us understand the pulse of product management. We discussed a number of factors, such as what department product management reports to in companies and what product managers say the future holds for the profession of product management, but I was most interested to learn the 4 skills that are correlated with product managers getting paid 25% more.

Rebecca is the Vice President of Marketing for Pragmatic Marketing. Prior to joining Pragmatic Marketing, Rebecca managed product management and marketing teams at a variety of software companies. I invited Rebecca to discuss the findings from Pragmatic Marketing’s 16th Annual Product Management and Marketing Survey.

 

Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators

Summary of questions discussed:

* What is the purpose of the Product Management and Marketing Survey? We run the survey every year to learn what’s changing, what’s staying the same, and where the problems are. The survey data gives us insights to the people we serve.

* What’s the story behind this year’s theme – comic book super heroes? When you’re creating products, really great products that delight and sell, it’s a herculean effort. Behind that effort in most companies are the product teams, but they’re often the unsung heroes. A lot of our own family and friends don’t really understand what we do.  That hero image and their secret identity, that combination of things match up with what product management and product marketing people do and who they are – superheroes.

* What do you know about the people who participated in the survey? We had 2549 people respond to the survey. They were from 57 countries and 45 states. Most have 10+ years of experience. 35% had been product owners before becoming a product manager while 21% joined product management from a sales role. 42% have a graduate degree and 71% hold at least one professional certification.

* Where are they spending most of their time – on what tasks? About 75% of their time is on tactical tasks, which includes putting out fires. 20% of their time is supporting Sales – answering questions and conducting product demonstrations. Only 5 hours/month is spent interviewing customers. We also learned that less than 20% of respondents are doing win/loss analysis. With 75% of their time on tactical activities, 25% is spent on strategic activities – creating business plans, conducting market research identifying potential future partners, and the like. We asked how they would like to spend their time and they want a 50/50 split between strategic and tactical activities.

* I saw a number of so-called soft skills in the findings, such as consensus building, empathy, and inspiring others. Which are most valued? We identified 7 skills that together we call the it factor. That’s when you know a person is going to go somewhere because they’ve got it. Four skills stand out in an important way – they were correlated with a 25% increase in earnings and those who had them were twice as likely to be an executive. The four skills are:

* Pitch artist – the ability to present and sell your ideas and conclusions.

* Exec debater — being the president of the product and standing up for what is needed and challenging executive teams.

* Inspire others — great products are built by great teams but these aren’t necessarily teams that product managers personally manage. Instead, product managers need to inspire them and share the vision of the product.

* Truth to power – being good at raising inconvenient truths and not running away from an unpopular message.

* What did the participants say the future of product management looks like? Businesses need to be agile and the use of Agile methodologies is not just fo...

I met my guest at a Product Camp and learned that we shared a perspective about innovation and product management processes. He sums up this perspective as being “anti-dogma.” There is a good deal of dogma around processes and too often processes are applied blindly without knowing the details required to use the process wisely in a specific situation and culture.

In this interview, we discuss the issue of process dogma as well as a toolbox approach to the work a product manager does.

My guest is Chris Spagnuolo. Chris is a product management and innovation consultant who works with organizations of all sizes to deeply understand their portfolio and product challenges and help them design opportunities to improve. He has led cross-functional, collaborative, agile product teams at organizations of all sizes and successfully founded three startups. He avoids dogma and instead focuses on generating insights through deep understanding of the organizations that he works with to identify a sustainable, adaptable journey for them to achieve their goals.

 

In this episode, we are talking about sales people and how product managers can improve their work with sales people. For some product managers, sales professionals are a source of tension, maybe because they overpromise and make product commitments without first coordinating with product management. For other product managers, sales professionals provide access to customers and help arrange problem-discovery interviews. They are an ally to product management.

Regardless of your working relationship with sales professionals, there is room for improvement. To explore this topic you would be hard-pressed to find anyone better than my guest, Keith Hawk. Keith has incredible street cred for this topic as he worked in a technology support role early in this career, working with sales professionals and product management. From there he served as the Director of Technology Support, Director of Marketing, VP Customer Support, and recently retired from his long-term role as the Senior Vice President of Sales for LexisNexis, a multi-billion dollar organization with over 10,000 employees. Keith has a very rich background in the information industry and he has played a broad role in the development of LexisNexis as a company. He is also the author of the book Get-Real Selling: Your Personal Coach for REAL Sales Excellence, which greatly influenced my thoughts on the function of Sales.

Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators

Summary of some concepts discussed:

* Business-to-Business sales is about one thing – helping to make other people’s businesses more successful. Aspects of this include helping them help their customers, improving the economics of their business, and improving the personal quality of their lives.

* A poor sales person can be thought of as a bag diver – a walking, talking brochure that is just spitting out product features until they find a feature or a product someone cares about — reaching into their bag of brochures over and over.

* 3 things a good sales professional wants from product managers are:

* Availability – open communication to discuss opportunities that may require a new product feature or an entirely new product.

* Interaction – product managers that can interact with customers and understand how customers actually use products and feel their challenges.

* Formalize – define the relationship between Sales and Product Management and schedule periodic collaboration to share successes and opportunities.

* When a sales person overcommits with a customer, promising a capability that doesn’t currently exist, a big girl, big boy talk is needed between Sales and Product Management leadership. Ask if this was our money, would it be in our best interest and the best interest of the customer to create the new capability. A foundation of expectations – values and standards to live by – should exist between Sales and Product Management.

* Product Management and Sales leadership need to set ground rules for customer discovery meetings and general interactions.

* Product managers can have customer discovery meetings with sales people during the early stages of a customer sales cycle, before a sales person has created a recommendation for the customer, without concern of the meeting becoming a sales meeting.

* To avoid Sales too frequently engaging product managers to meet with customers, consider if sales engineers are needed. Also, set an expectation between Sales and Product Management for how much of a product manager’s time can be devoted to direct support of Sales, such as 10% of their time.

 

Useful links:

* Keith’s book,

Chad McAllister, PhD - Helping Product Managers become Product Masters

clean

40:41

TEI 128: Creating better product teams – with Nate Walkingshaw

https://productinnovationeducators.com/blog/tei-128-creating-better-product-teams-with-nate-walkingshaw/

Mon, 12 Jun 2017 11:50:00 +0000

https://productinnovationeducators.com/?p=11122

  Back in episode 121 I had the pleasure of talking with Richard Banfield, one of three authors of the new book Product Leadership. Then, in episode 125 I spoke with Martin Eriksson, who also is a co-author of the book. So, it seemed only proper that I make this a true trifecta by interviewing […]

  Back in episode 121 I had the pleasure of talking with Richard Banfield, one of three authors of the new book Product Leadership. Then, in episode 125 I spoke with Martin Eriksson, who also is a co-author of the book. So,

 

Back in episode 121 I had the pleasure of talking with Richard Banfield, one of three authors of the new book Product Leadership. Then, in episode 125 I spoke with Martin Eriksson, who also is a co-author of the book. So, it seemed only proper that I make this a true trifecta by interviewing the third co-author, which is Nate Walkingshaw. I was especially eager to do this after Richard told me that Nate is the smartest product person he knows. Nate has some firm opinions on product teams and how to structure teams to work well. You may have seen his thought-provoking post on Mind the Product titled, “Agile Died While You Were Doing Your Standup.” In our discussion, we touch on concepts from that post but dive deeper into team structures and needs for modern product teams.

Nate has started successful companies in the medical and fitness markets and has had many product experiences. Later he became the Chief Product Officer for Pluralsight, the largest providers of online technology learning, where he built a user-centered product team. In 2016 his role expanded to Chief Experience Officer where he oversees Development, Content, and Product Marketing.

 

Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators

Summary of some concepts discussed:

* Nate’s new book, Product Leadership, is now available. It is the first book focused on product leadership for product managers.

* Software as a Service (SaaS) has forced teams to change. The feedback loop between users and developers is now “end-of-the-day” – hours, not days.

* Siloed teams won’t work today – product teams must be fully integrated.

* Corporate strategy and technology strategy must be aligned.

* The three key elements for teams that increase velocity are:

* Vision – is there a clear vision for each product team and are they connected to the vision?

* Strategy – do team members know the product strategy and how their work fits into the strategy of the team and the organization?

* Autonomy – do team members have the freedom to explore the execution of the strategy for the team?

* Velocity also increases when team members experience first-hand how customers respond to using the product and to changes when they are made. Web collaboration tools are used with customers for real-time interactions.

* Compensate teams, not individuals, for meeting objectives.

Useful links’

* New Book – Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams

* Pluralsite—technology training and where Nate is Chief Experience Officer

 

Innovation Quote

“In a world of change, the learners shall inherit the earth, while the learned shall find themselves perfectly suited for a world that no longer exists.” ― Eric Hoffer

 

Thanks!

Thank you for being an Everyday Innovator and learning with me from the successes and failures of product innovators, managers, and developers. If you enjoyed the discussion, help out a fellow product manager by sharing it using the social media buttons you see below.

 

This is a listener suggested episode, which I love doing. I enjoy receiving requests from listeners asking for specific topics to explore. Several people have had questions about B2B product management. A B2B company sells its products to other organizations while a B2C company provides its products to consumers.

To explore this topic, I asked Jeff Lash to join us. Jeff is a recognized thought leader in product management, with over a decade of experience in the development of Web-based products and SaaS systems. His product management career includes both new product launches and major turnarounds of existing product lines, as well as creation of the product management role into organizations. He has significant expertise in customer understanding, new product innovation, agile product management, user experience design, and product development processes. He is a Vice President at SiriusDecisions, a research and advisory company for B2B organizations.

While the focus of our discussion is on product management for B2B companies, there are tips and practices B2C product managers will find valuable too.

 

Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators

Summary of some questions discussed:

* How does B2B product management differ from B2C? The B2B product group is like a smaller business in a larger business. B2B product managers are generally responsible for an entire product while a B2C product manager may be responsible for a portion of a product, for example, the Search capability of a product. While there are many similarities, I’m starting to see some trends in differences, such as with the importance of user experience design. Also, B2B product managers are more involved in enabling and helping the sales team be successful.

 

* How do B2B sales models impact product management? Direct or indirect sale channels are part of the B2B product manager’s tools and responsibilities. Product Management is interlocked with the Marketing and Sales function of an organization. Product managers can get overloaded by Sales and sucked into helping too much with questions and customer calls instead of doing the work of product management. Organizations that excel have balance. They have clear responsibilities for product managers in terms of how they support Sales and well-communicated ground rules. Also, Product Marketing exists as a function to transfer knowledge of the product to rest of the organization. We see alignment between the executives responsible for Product Management, Marketing, and Sales.

 

* How do buying roles impact product management? This is a key difference with B2B product management compared to B2C. In a B2B environment, there are multiple buyers, such as Decision Maker, Champion, Influencer, and GateKeeper, in addition to the actual users of the product. Product managers need to address personas for each of the roles involved in the buying process and also help Sales understand these roles and vice-versa.

 

* How can product managers avoid the “one-off” practice that some B2B organizations find themselves in – customizing a product for each customer? Organizational culture is a key influencer to this situation. Some cultures permit sales professionals to write new product capabilities into customer contracts and then product management has to find a way to satisfy the expectations created by Sales. This is a poor practice. Executives need to be in alignment and have a clear means of addressing specific customer requests. One technique is to have an agreed upon percentage of product management and development resources to respond to requests from Sales. For example, 20% of the roadmap is set aside to be sales opportunity driven. Also, when new product functionality is needed to “close” a deal or keep a customer,

A brand new book for product managers and innovators hits physical and virtual shelves this week. It's titled Mapping Innovation and my guest, Greg Satell, is the author. We talk about some of the concepts from the book and other writing he has done, including while there is no one-way right way for companies to innovate, there are patterns, as well as a framework for different types of innovations and skills needed for each.

Greg has several international business experiences building and managing media businesses. He last served as the SVP of Strategy and Innovation at Moxie Interactive, a leading marketing services organizations. Lately he has been writing and speaking about innovation and I'm glad he is speaking with us, in this interview.

 

You are not alone as a product manager or innovator if you have had to explain your job to people you work with. It’s not uncommon. While your role is vital to the creation of successful products, it is not always understood by others. It can also be a lonely role because of that. Even though product managers frequently collaborate with others, they don’t often interact with other product managers – people who actually understand their job along with the joys, frustrations, and pains it brings.

What is a product manager or innovator to do? My guest has the answer, and it is one I have experienced and valued myself – participating in communities of practice.

My guest is a co-author of the book, Product Leadership, which was the topic of episode 121 with one of the other co-authors. He started his career as a web designer and developer but found his real talent was translating between design, development, and business people. After several startups in his native Stockholm, he has led product teams at Monster, the Financial Times, Huddle, and Covestor in London and Boston. You may recognize him as the founder of ProductTank, a meetup for product managers, and co-founder of Mind the Product, a blog and training resource for product managers. His name is Martin Eriksson. Our discussion covers why product managers need to be part of a community of practice and, if you are not already, how to join or start one.

Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators

Summary of some questions discussed:

* Please share an update on your Product Leadership book.  It’s being released next week, at the end of May. Details are available at Productleadershipbook.com. We interviewed 75-100 product leaders to understand the challenges with product leadership and how to overcome them. We are discussing the book at some upcoming meetups as well as the Mind the Product annual conference in June in San Francisco.

 

* What is a community of practice? If you look at established professions like Law, Engineering, or Project Management, you find strong professional groups where people come together to learn from each other and explore what is new. That is a community of practice. It may take the form of a meetup, professional association, or another form of group.

 

* Why do product managers need to be part of a community of practice? Product managers can feel a bit alone on the job. We may be the only product manager on a team. You don’t have anyone to complain to about the work and bounce ideas off of that also understands the role. You can feel like Engineering is ganging up on you, Business Leadership is putting undue pressure on you, or Sales is ignoring you.  You need get out of that environment at times and talk to peers in similar situations and know that you really are not alone. You need a tribe of your own to be part of.

 

* What should product managers expect from a productive community of practice? Product managers need to be curious and always learning. The pace of change in industries and technologies requires product managers to be learning and striving to stay in front of the meaningful changes. The ability to learn from your peers is the most important aspect of a community of practice. You also get to hear about the challenges others are facing. It’s important to know that you are not alone and that others encounter similar issues.

 

* What are opportunities for product managers? One group that has been around is Product Camp. It’s a one-day unconference, generally with no set agenda that self-organizes shortly before the conference or even the morning of the conference by the attendees. Product Tank that I started has more than a 100 locations around the world. It is a fairly standardized format, with meetings taking place in the evenings after work ...

Product managers and innovators want more influence in an organization so they can better create value for customers. Without influence, we can’t build support for our ideas and convince others to help us. Influence also allows us to be more strategic in our work, which is the same thing executive leaders want from product management. When I share that this podcast and my training helps product managers become product masters, increasing influence is the key factor involved for the product manager. Part of the journey to mastery is thinking more strategically and more in terms of value not only to customers but to the organization as a whole. This means moving from involvement in the design of products to involvement in the design of businesses.

And that is exactly what today’s guest is here to talk with us about — thinking of business design through the lens of product management and innovation. My guest is Jay Peters, Managing Director for PARK USA. PARK is one of the leading experts in the management of design and innovation. They consult, coach and educate on how to maximize the value of design.

Product managers and innovators learn about four areas of Design Value from the interview:

* More profit,

* More brand equity,

* More innovation, and

* Faster change.

Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators

Summary of some questions discussed:

* What is Design Value in an organization and why is it important?  It simply means the value that design can create for organizations. The challenge is to identify the contributions that design can bring to an organization. Value is often measured using the triple bottom line — economic, social, and environmental dimensions. In addition to organizational profit, you ask how the organization is doing good for the community and for the environment. For design value, there are four main categories for contributions: profits, brand equity, innovation, and change. Design is about the approach, strategy, and methodology for making improvements in each category.

 

* What is the profit category?  This is the economic component of the triple bottom line. Design can help drive profits several different ways. It can help sell more of the same offer or product or create a premium product to sell at a higher price. Design can also help decrease manufacturing or marketing costs.

 

* What is the brand equity category? Design can help increase brand exposure, loyalty, awareness, and desirability. It is really about brand positioning and recognition. Design can have a significant impact on driving a brand strategy.

 

* What is the innovation category? Design can help innovation from a consumer or desirability standpoint, which can lead to improved innovation and faster time to market. It can also produce more intellectual property, contributing to improved value for the organization.

 

* What is the change category? This impacts organizational culture or society. Design can help organizations foster a culture of innovation and creativity. It can help society with some of its most challenging problems such as issues around pollution, homelessness, etc. Change is always resisted until those involved understand the benefits of making the change. Change can be accomplished top down, with senior leadership driving the change, or from the bottom up, such as a product team pushing for change improve value for customers.

 

Useful links

* Jay is with PARK, guiding design leaders

* Design blog Jay contributes to – Empowering design leaders

 

Innovation Quotes

“Great design management and leadership adds great value to the t...

 

This interview is rather meta. It’s a discussion about a book; not about the book itself, but about the product management decisions for creating the book. This is the story of recognizing a problem a target market has and addressing it with a product.

You likely already know my guest, Alex Osterwalder, as the inventor of the Business Model Canvas — a one-page business model — and author of the related book Business Model Generation. He is also the 2015 winner of the prestigious Thinkers50 Strategy Award and is ranked as the #15 most influential business thinker by Thinkers 50. Further, in 2013 he won the inaugural Innovation Luminary Award by the European Union. He more recently co-authored the book Value Proposition Design, which in a way, is the topic of our discussion.

However, I didn’t want to ask him the same questions he has been asked a hundred times that you can find in other interviews. Instead, I asked him to discuss the book from the perspective of a product manager — identifying the need for the book, its target market, the value it creates for customers and for his organization, as well as how the name was chosen. So, you not only get some insights into what Value Proposition Design is, you also get to see the book as a product and the product management thinking that went into its creation.

If you are new to Value Proposition Design, think of it as the third leg of a stool consisting of Lean Startup and Design Thinking as the other legs — all three are similar in intent and each provides valuable tools, arguably with Alex’s tools being most valuable to product managers who think like product leaders — or in my words, product masters.

 

Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators

Summary of some questions discussed:

* Why was this product needed – the Value Proposition Design book? There were two triggers. The first one was that the Business Model Generation book was pretty successful and a lot of people started using the business model canvas. What we didn’t realize is that some people were repurposing the business model canvas to sketch out their value proposition. The business model canvas was never designed to help with that particular job. The only job to be done was how to sketch a business model. So we tried to figure out what would another tool be to satisfy the need. So that was the origin of the tool – addressing an unmet need of our existing customers. The second tool customers needed was the value proposition canvas. It’s like zooming in. The business model is the big picture perspective and you zoom into the value proposition. The other trigger was that we learned so much over the year since we launched Business Model Generation that we had a huge need to share that learning. We built upon what was working, integrating customer development and lean startup approaches into the new book with what we were learning as well.  Also, we had just launched the Strategyzer brand and the book was an opportunity to promote the brand with “Strategyzer” on the cover.

 

* What opportunities would the book create for your company? The original vision for Strategyzer was to be the SAP of strategy, or the strategic operating system. We wanted to build the enterprise software that would help senior leaders manage strategy, manage innovation, and create new growth engines. It’s like strategy support tools, computer-aided design for strategy. So that was the original vision. Ultimately what we learned over time was we need three pillars to realize the vision. One is the tools and the concepts and the content. How do we help business people better solve these jobs to be done? How do they create business models, value propositions, etc.? You do that with the right tools and right processes. We teach it to them with content. The second pillar is the platform.

Listen Now to the Interview

 

Ok, I admit it, value is my most overused word. It’s because I love the word. What do product managers and innovators create for customers? Value! How about organizations? They create value. What do customers want? The products they purchase must provide value — more value for them than other product options provide. How do product managers want to be seen by those that they work with? As someone who is valuable –again, creating value. Yes, value is central to product management and innovation.

It’s also an important term to my guest who has explored various models of value. He is the author of the weekly Pivot Product Hits, a newsletter for product managers on digital product strategy. He has been a Product Manager, creating digital products and services, for over 15 years, and is currently the Managing Director of Castle in the UK. His name is Paul Jackson.

In the discussion, you will learn:

* What is important about creating value.

* The Almquist model of value.

* How to discover what customers’ value.

 

Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators

Summary of some questions discussed:

* How did the Pivot Product Hits newsletter come about? The name came about as I was looking for a Twitter handle around the time that the Lean Startup book was published. The notion of a pivot caught my attention and the handle was available. At the time, I had worked for 10 years as a user experience designer and for a few years as a product manager. I sensed that product management was going to become a significant discipline in the future. At the time there were few British bloggers writing about product management. I wanted to be one of them and write about my observations. My early posts were about bringing lean practices to corporate settings. While that is rather standard now, at the time is was a very new concept for rigid corporate environments.

 

* Frame the concept of value for us. Value is extremely relevant in product management conversations. It is at the heart of challenges product managers face. Consumer choice and the decisions involved when making product purchases are not rational. We make decisions based on a subjective view of gains and losses. The constitution of value is grounded in these irrational decisions but refracted through the lens of gains and losses. In the world of digital applications, there are far too many choices available to consumers. The ability to understand what informs consumer choice is a ninja skill for product managers to make their products stand out from competitors and appeal to users.

 

* What are the elements of value? There are many value models to consider, from Alan Klement’s Job Story to Alex Osterwalder’s Value Proposition Canvas. One of the most exciting contributions to this topic is from Eric Almquist and team at Bain. Extending Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, they represent the elements of value as a pyramid stacked in four layers (shown below). All together, they identified 30 elements of value. The four layers, starting at the bottom are: Functional Elements, Emotional Elements, Life Changing Elements, and Social Impact Elements. Many products directly compete on functional elements of value. However, Almquist’s research shows the opportunity to find Blue Oceans and increase profit margins is by competing on emotional elements of value. Apple is a good example that does this well. An interesting finding is that the best companies in a category are only better than their competitors on around 8-9 value elements. Consequently, success does not mean excelling in all 30 elements of value. Parity on most elements while excelling in 5-8 elements important to consumers is a good starting point.