{"id":3899,"date":"2016-02-19T11:59:58","date_gmt":"2016-02-19T11:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/?p=3899"},"modified":"2023-04-19T16:15:47","modified_gmt":"2023-04-19T15:15:47","slug":"get-new-product-ideas-internally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prodpad.com\/blog\/get-new-product-ideas-internally\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Get Brilliant Product Ideas Out Of Non-Product People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The life of a product manager<\/a> can be lonely, especially if companies continue to believe that it\u2019s a PM\u2019s duty to somehow generate new product ideas<\/a> on their own.

There\u2019s a less lonely way, says MindtheProduct co-founder Martin Eriksson<\/a>:

\u201cThe bottom line is that everyone in the company owns the product, and its success or failure lie in the hands of everyone who touches it. A product manager\u2019s job is to lead the team to tackle the product challenges together, to get the best out of everyone on the team when building the product, and to provide a gentle hand to keep it all consistent and going in the right direction.\u201d<\/i>

In other words, effective product teams (and companies) work together.<\/a>

But the near-universal experience of product managers who try to get their non-product teams in the game is underwhelming.

‘Let\u2019s make that button blue!’<\/i> or ‘Can we get this new feature in?’<\/i>

You can’t do anything with that.

This is as far as “team collaboration” usually gets for product managers, who have no idea what to do with a inbox full of zero context ideas.

There are a few things happening here.

First, the people who work with you don’t realize how many of those ideas pile up in your product backlog. They don’t know the kinds of things you\u2019re weighing up. They also don\u2019t know how much time it takes you to go through your backlog. If they’re unhelpful, it’s probably because they don\u2019t really know what you do.

At ProdPad, we\u2019ve found that you can incentivize your colleagues to send you better ideas by making it easy for them to submit ideas to the product backlog<\/a> and by acknowledging them in a timely manner.

The following has worked so well for us that we\u2019ve built it into our own product:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Ask for a business case with each idea<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I love that anyone who submits a new idea in ProdPad has to think about why<\/em> they’re doing it. The two questions that make up the business case give you some much needed context:<\/p>\n\n\n\n