Product discovery coach, author of Continuous Discovery Habits; writes Product Talk.
“It’s easy to talk about idea management. It’s much harder to do it in practice. Including everyone in idea generation in a way that is productive takes effort. Collecting feedback on each idea can be tedious. But we know involving everyone in idea evaluation leads to better outcomes.”
Torres argues that many good ideas begin as seemingly infeasible or bad ideas, and that their value often emerges through hard work and reframing. She proposes evaluating ideas first against the team's vision and…
Teresa Torres responds to reactions to her earlier post arguing against traditional brainstorming. She clarifies how creative output is measured (fluency, flexibility, originality) and addresses objections about…
Teresa Torres argues that product leaders should not be the sole decision-makers on what to build, and that a company should instead empower its whole team to generate and evaluate ideas. She contends that…
Teresa Torres argues that once a product's success funnel converts well, the next step is growth, but only after that funnel is healthy; otherwise acquiring users just wastes time, energy and money. She introduces two…
Torres argues that good product goals start from the user's success rather than vanity product metrics like page views or time on site. She recommends defining a success funnel by comparing successful users with…
Teresa Torres argues that product builders make constant decisions, but human judgment is error-prone, so teams should deliberately design decision-making processes. She identifies eight critical decisions in building…
Teresa Torres argues that New Year's resolutions fail because people rely on willpower rather than habits, and she draws on habit research such as Charles Duhigg's work. She describes how she built sustainable routines…
Teresa Torres argues that most product teams lack a clear, written vision even though everyone agrees one is important. She identifies five reasons teams skip it: unclear ownership, the discomfort of saying no, the…
Teresa Torres walks through a worked example of a clear product vision using her side project GratiGrams, a service for sharing specific appreciation with others. She shows how a vision statement, mission, core values…
Teresa Torres argues that great products depend on a clear vision, which she treats as one of three pillars alongside sound decision making and building the right team. Product teams often assume alignment that doesn't…
Teresa Torres argues that great products rest on three pillars: a clear vision, thoughtful processes that support sound day-to-day decisions, and the right team. She admits her own uncertainty about what makes products…
Teresa Torres shares the personal productivity, reading, product-building, and collaboration tools she relies on as a product manager, startup builder, and graduate student. She opens with a caveat that she once…
Teresa Torres shares a list of lesser-known blogs she follows, inspired by Daniel Pink's year-end recommendations. Rather than product blogs, she highlights writers covering learning, decision making, happiness…
Teresa Torres, a product discovery coach, shares the standout books from her 2013 reading list of roughly 50 titles. She recommends a mix of sales, energy management, luck versus skill, analytics, presentation…
Teresa Torres argues that people often hear what they expect rather than what was actually said, which leads teams to disagree about the same user interview and to build the wrong product. Because great products depend…
Teresa Torres shares a short, personal reflection prompted by a quote from Brett Martin about his decision to step away from his startup Sonar. Her core point is that founders sometimes must concede a battle to win the…
Teresa Torres argues that remote teams are becoming the norm, and that companies focus too much on their benefits while underestimating the challenges. Drawing on her experience with distributed graduate-school teams…
Torres argues that job seekers should treat themselves as a product, defining a few clear value propositions that differentiate them, much as successful products focus on a specific use case. She shows how to map those…
Teresa Torres argues that job seekers should research their target market and specific companies before applying, treating the search like product discovery. She suggests interviewing the target companies' customers…
Teresa Torres argues that job seekers should treat themselves as a product and, like any good product, target a narrow market rather than trying to appeal to everyone. A broad search across trendy tech companies leaves…
Torres argues that the standard job-hunt routine of polishing a resume and mass-applying to postings rarely works, even for strong candidates. Instead, she proposes treating yourself as a product and applying the…
Teresa Torres wraps a 3-month blog series inspired by Chip and Dan Heath's book Decisive, connecting its decision-making research to product work. Her posts argue that product teams should be prepared to be wrong, ask…
Teresa Torres argues that product managers often make quick, gut-based calls when colleagues ask for features or details, and that the way decisions are made matters as much as the decisions themselves. Drawing on…
Teresa Torres uses Jia Jiang's story of pursuing a startup dream under a six-month deadline to introduce the idea of tripwires: predefined points where a decision gets reconsidered. She argues that as people invest…
Teresa Torres argues that product people routinely make poor estimates because they produce single-point predictions for uncertain outcomes like build time or conversion rates. Drawing on research summarized in the…
Teresa Torres argues that as a product grows and the leader can no longer be everywhere, the vision must be turned into guardrails that let others decide autonomously yet consistently. Drawing on the Heath brothers'…
Teresa Torres argues that resistance to product changes often has little to do with whether the new design solves a real need. Instead, people push back because they have grown familiar with the status quo and because…
Teresa Torres describes a common product dilemma: a few at-risk customers request a feature that doesn't fit the product's strategy and may have more perceived than actual value. She argues that the hardest part is not…
Teresa Torres argues that most product ideas are born from fleeting thoughts, but only some should become businesses. She offers a set of questions to test an idea's viability before investing heavily. Her approach…