TEI 018: Product Management through the Eyes of a Cartoonist

Global Product Management Talk is pleased to bring you episode
018 of... The Everyday Innovator with host Chad
McAllister, PhD. The podcast is all about helping people involved
in developing and managing products become more successful, grow
their careers, and STANDOUT from their peers. Our Guest: Kriti
Vichare writes about the life of  innovators and entrepreneurs
as a doodler/cartoonist at #Entrepreneur Fail. Her work has
appeared in Forbes, Under30CEO, and Business2Community, plus many
more. She also serves as the Director of Innovation for the United
States Postal Service and previously worked for PepsiCo as a Senior
Marketing Manager and Kraft Foods as an Associate Brand Manager.
Highlights from the discussion include: Kriti describes her career
path as a cartoonist would – started in statistics, moved to
selling juice, and now sells mail for a living.At Kraft, Kriti
managed the Tang product (originally an orange drink made from
powder popularized when NASA astronauts drank it in space), and
learned through market research that a trend among Tang drinkers
had changed. Reformulating Tang to use real sugar brought customers
back.Kriti learned the most about innovation and product management
when she left the corporate world and founded her own
startup. She skipped validating her product idea with
potential customers and plummeted into creating it. After
floundering for a bit, she read the Lean Startup and started
applying concepts she was already familiar with, such as the
Minimum Viable Product.