Marty Cagan has been working on and with technology-powered empowered product teams for his entire career. Before founding the Silicon Valley Product Group to pursue his interests in helping others create successful products through his writing, speaking, advising, and coaching, Marty Cagan served as an executive responsible for defining and building products for some of the most successful companies in the world, including Hewlett-Packard, Netscape Communications, and eBay. As part of his work with SVPG, Marty is an invited speaker at major conferences and top companies across the globe. Marty is the author of INSPIRED: How To Create Tech Products Customers Love, and EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products.
By Marty Cagan
What is it about the top tech product companies such as Amazon, Apple, Google, Netflix, and Tesla that enables their record of consistent innovation?
Most people think it’s because these companies are somehow able to find and attract a level of talent that makes this innovation possible. But the real advantage these companies have is not so much who they hire, but rather how they enable their people to work together to solve hard problems and create extraordinary products.
As legendary Silicon Valley coach--and coach to the founders of several of today’s leading tech companies--Bill Campbell said, “Leadership is about recognizing that there's a greatness in everyone, and your job is to create an environment where that greatness can emerge.” The goal of EMPOWERED is to provide leaders of product management, product design, or engineering, with everything they need to create just such an environment.
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By Reed Hastings, Erin Meyer
By far my favorite book on Empowerment at Netflix is the newly released No Rules Rules by co-founder Reed Hastings, along with Erin Meyer. Most of what’s been written prior on Netflix is more origin story than innovation engine, and this book gives you a good look at a company that sets the empowerment dial to 10.
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By Jonathan Rosenberg, Eric Schmidt
Google is a very large and sprawling company, where one team in one group can often work very different than another. But there are common principles and my favorite book (so far) is How Google Works by former CEO Eric Schmidt, and former head of product Jonathan Rosenberg.
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By Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
Amazon is, in my view, the most consistently innovative product company in the world, and their founder Jeff Bezos has been sharing truly valuable insights into product and leadership since the early days of the company. The new book Working Backwards by long-time Amazonians Colin Bryar and Bill Carr does the best job so far in highlighting the important aspects of how the company has created such a consistent machine for innovation.
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By Ken Kocienda
Apple is the most secretive commercial company I know. Most books that have been written about them are about their colorful co-founder Steve Jobs, and much less about the inner workings. My favorite book on how the actual work of product is done at Apple is Creative Selection by former engineering lead Ken Kocienda. Ken worked on some of the company’s most important products and technologies, during what I’d consider the peak innovation period for the company (so far). Because Ken is an engineer, this book provides the engineering perspective, but the book is loaded with useful observations, learnings and insights.
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By Simon Sinek
There are many excellent general management books about the value of empowered teams, but this book by Simon Sinek is one of my favorites. In this book, he also references and puts into context many of the books and articles that have been published on the topic of empowerment, so it’s a good general overview of the topic, as well as an inspiring read.
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