AMA: Gainsight Director, Product Management, Pavan Kumar on Product Innovation
April 15 @ 10:00AM PT
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Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • Apr 15
Data-driven decisions, for me, are about combining data, context, and judgment - not just relying on dashboards.Start with a clear question or hypothesisWhat decision am ...
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Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • Apr 15
Start by tying the idea to a clear business outcome, then de-risk it with evidence before asking for full investment.Anchor on the “why now”What market shift, customer pa...
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Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • Apr 15
Engineering and design are not execution functions in innovation - they are co-creators who shape the idea, not just build it.Design: problem framing and desirabilityBrin...
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Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • Apr 15
You manage innovation risk by making it explicit, breaking it into testable assumptions, and de-risking it in stages rather than betting big upfront.Identify and classify...
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Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • Apr 15
Generate ideas widely using customer and data signals, but evaluate them ruthlessly on impact, risk, and strategic fit before investing. I use a combination of structured...
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Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • Apr 15
Most product managers don’t fail at innovation because of lack of ideas, but because they approach it with the wrong mindset and operating model. Starting with solutions,...
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Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • Apr 15
Innovation thrives when teams have clarity on problems, permission to experiment, and a system to scale what works. You foster a culture of innovation by making it safe, ...
368 Views
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Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • Apr 15
Breakthrough ideas don’t come from brainstorming sessions. They come from seeing what others overlook and connecting the dots early.In practice, they emerge from a combin...
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How do you do customer discovery, and what is the hardest thing for you about it?
How do you go about figuring out what the most impactful problems are for you to solve for your customers? How do you validate that they are really problems and how many users have those problems?
Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • Apr 15
Customer discovery, for me, is about separating what customers say from what actually drives behavior, friction, and willingness to change. The goal is not just to collec...
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Gainsight Director, Product Management | Formerly Cisco • Apr 15
There’s no fixed ratio - it should evolve with product maturity. The best teams intentionally balance big bets and incremental improvements based on where the product is ...
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