Product Quest Podcast

Episode 18: Entrepreneurship with Murat Goker and Francesco Cardoletti, part 1

As listeners know, on the show we love to dive deep into innovation and business theories and frameworks. But at the end of the day what really matters is actually building products and services that people want in order to build successful businesses. Well… our guests today definitely know a lot about that, Murat Göker and Francesco Cardoletti are both successful and experienced serial entrepreneurs who have built businesses in diverse industries and geographical regions. This is part 1 of our discussion.
Murat has built and operated ventures in retail fashion, concierge services, commodities trading, advising micro-startup for equity and for the past 10 years, he has ventured into pharma. Namely in 2013 he founded Ideogen with his father and brothers: a 360 degrees commercialization platform for specialty therapies (mainly orphan or rare disease) in which he currently serves as Chief Commercial Officer.
Francesco has built and operated ventures in the health, telecom, fin-tech, fashion and edu-tech sectors in both the UK and US. He is the co-founder and was the CEO of PawSquad, a company providing telemedicine for pets, which was acquired by IVC Evidensia in 2018. He currently works as Strategy and Product Lead at Unilever Foundry where he works with the best scaleups and startups in the world to launch disruptive innovation on a global scale. 
 
Murat and Francesco have worked together as business partners in the past and as all great teams, they are very complementary in their approach and ways of thinking which is the reason why we decided to invite both of them together on the show!

Episode 17: Lindsay Zaltman – Understanding Customer with Deep Metaphors, part 2

Today we will venture into the twilight of the unconscious and see how that helps create strategies and campaigns that click with customers on a very different level. A special guest Lindsay Zaltman who knows all about this is joining us today. Lindsay is CEO and Partner at Olsan Zaltman a consumer insights and strategy agency. Lindsay is co-author of a book I highly recommend “Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors reveal about the minds of consumers”. He’s been published in the Harvard Business Review and speaks at conferences all over the world and regularly at Fortune 500 companies. This is part 2 of our discussion with Lindsay, part one was last weeks episode.
 
Referenced on the show:
Marketing Metaphoria, Gerald Zaltman & Lindsay Zaltman
Decartes’ Error, Antonio Damasio
The Extended Mind, Annie Murphy Paul
The Illusion of Conscious Will, Daniel Wegner
Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff
Influence, Robert Cialdini
How We Decide, Jonah Lehrer

Episode 16: Lindsay Zaltman – Understanding Customers with Deep Metaphors, part 1

Today we will venture into the twilight of the unconscious and see how that helps create strategies and campaigns that click with customers on a very different level. A special guest Lindsay Zaltman who knows all about this is joining us today. Lindsay is CEO and Partner at Olsan Zaltman a consumer insights and strategy agency. Lindsay is co-author of a book I highly recommend “Marketing Metaphoria: What Deep Metaphors reveal about the minds of consumers”. He’s been published in the Harvard Business Review and speaks at conferences all over the world and regularly at Fortune 500 companies. This is part 1 of our discussion with Lindsay.
 
Referenced on the show:
Marketing Metaphoria, Gerald Zaltman & Lindsay Zaltman
Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff

Episode 15: Jan Schmiedgen and Design Thinking, part 2

This is part 2 of our talk with Jan Schmiedgen. We will talk about all things Design and Innovation. Jan is one of those Duracell-bunny energy level kinds of people, which shows in his career path. Among doing many things he has published and blogged a lot on Design and Innovation in various places. He co-curates the blog thisisdesignthinking.net, is an entrepreneur who had several businesses and now managing partner and Innovation strategist at Codify. There is one sentence on the Codify website that sums Jan up: “intellectual curiosity paired with the strong need for independence”. Jan cofounded Codify, an agency that supports organizations in innovating their innovation management and supports them in a lean and evidence-based way.
 
Referenced on the show:
Codify Design Thinking Article
Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning, Rittel & Webber
Wicked Problems in Design Thinking, Richard Buchanan

Episode 14: Jan Schmiedgen and Design Thinking, part 1

This is part 1 of our talk with Jan Schmiedgen. We will talk about all things Design and Innovation. Jan is one of those Duracell-bunny energy level kinds of people, which shows in his career path. Among doing many things he has published and blogged a lot on Design and Innovation in various places. He co-curates the blog thisisdesignthinking.net, is an entrepreneur who had several businesses and now managing partner and Innovation strategist at Codify. There is one sentence on the Codify website that sums Jan up: “intellectual curiosity paired with the strong need for independence”. Jan cofounded Codify, an agency that supports organizations in innovating their innovation management and supports them in a lean and evidence-based way.
 
Referenced on the show:
Codify Design Thinking Article
The Business Model Ontology: a Proposition in a Design Science Approach, Alex Osterwalder PhD
Managing as Designing, Boland & Collopi
Bruce Nussbaum business week articles: The Power of Design, Are Designers the enemy of Design
The design of Business, Roger martin
d-school
Hasso Plattner Institut
“we are sinking” ad

Episode 13: Michele Hansen on Customer Interviewing

Today, we welcome our special guest, Michele Hansen. Michele is the co-founder of the Software-as-a-Service company Geocodio, along with her husband Mathias. Prior to being an entrepreneur, Michele was a product manager in financial publishing and a project manager for a web development agency. 
She’s also a co-host of the Software Social Podcast, a weekly conversation between two SaaS founders… self-described as “one just starting out, and one who’s established.”
 
Michele is the author of an excellent book on customer interviewing, “Deploy Empathy”, which we are certain to get into today.
 
Referenced on the show:
Deploy Empathy, Michele Hansen
When Coffee and Kale Compete, Alan Klement
Just Enough Research, Erica Hall
Customer Visits, Edward McQuarrie
Practical Empathy, Indi Young
Interviewing Users, Steve Portigal
Demand-Side Sales, Bob Moesta
The Mom Test, Rob Fitzpatrick
Never Split the Difference, Chris Voss
The Pragmatic Programmer, David Thomas & Andrew Hunt
You Just Don’t Understand, Deborah Tannen

Episode 12: Katerina Kozludzhova and the Discipline of Innovation

Today, we welcome our special guest, Katerina Kozludzhova. Katerina is an experienced product manager who became so enthusiastic about innovation, she went on to get a PhD, with her dissertation on the commercialization of software innovations. 
Today, she is the Chief Assistant Professor of Business Innovations at Plovdiv University in Bulgaria where she teaches courses on innovation, creativity, design thinking, product development, and commercialization. 
She’s the author of the book, “Business Innovation,” which we are certain to get into today.
 
Referenced on the show:
Business Innovation, Katerina Kozludskova 
The personal MBA, Josh Kauffman
The Innovator’s DNA, Jeff dyer
Innovator’s Dilemma, Clayton Christensen
Oslo Manual, OECD
Diffusion of Innovations, Everett Rogers
Qualtrics Survey Software

Episode 11: Breaking JTBD, The Answer, part 2

So we release part 2 of our effort to try to break jobs to be done. We prod it, push it, pull on it and generally try to exploit its weaknesses to see how it holds up. We will look at situations where JTBD seems to break down... situations where things people do are hard to explain from a jtbd perspective. We will talk about the role of emotion in people’s behaviour. In JTBD there is this notion of an emotional job which we will take apart.
 
Referenced on the show:
The Statue in the Stone, Scott Burleson
How Emotions are Made, Lisa Feldman Barrett

Episode 10: Breaking JTBD, The Riddle

Today, we try to break jobs to be done. We prod it, push it, pull on it and generally try to exploit its weaknesses to see how it holds up. We will look at situations where JTBD seems to break down... situations where things people do are hard to explain from a jtbd perspective. We will talk about the role of emotion in people’s behaviour. In JTBD there is this notion of an emotional job which we will take apart.
 
This is part 1 – the riddle. Stay tuned for part 2 next week!
 
Referenced on the show:
Motivating Human Behavior, Ernest Dichter
Hooked, Nir Eyal

Episode 9: The Customer-Focused Innovation approach with Beat Walther, part 2

Today, we welcome Beat Walther for the second part of our talk. Beat started out his career at P&G, has worked at McKinsey and is managing partner at Vendbridge, the agency I work at and which he co-founded 20 years ago. He is co-creator of the CFI approach. CFI stands for Customer-Focused Innovation, an approach which helps companies focus their innovation resources on the winning ideas. Beyond his work at Vendbridge he is a board member and has coached more than 200 Startups.
To listen to part 1, just scroll down to episode 8!