Gear: Hub City Vintage Watch Rolls

People who know me know that I’ve recently picked up a really bad case of watch fever. Hopefully it’s not terminal, but it’s bad enough that, over the past year, I’ve accumulated enough watches to need a way to safely house and transport them all. To that end, I recently purchased something called a watch roll from a fantastic company out of South Carolina called Hub City Vintage. And I liked that first roll so much that I went ahead and purchased two more.

My experience with the Hub City Vintage family of watch rolls inspired me to create this video review. Give it a click if you’d like to learn more about watch rolls, discover why the watch lover in your life might need one, and why I think the Hub City Vintage family of watch rolls is perfect for the type of person who, like me, never thought they’d find themselves buying a watch roll.

Oh, and I think it’s worth mentioning that Hub City Vintage watch rolls are all handmade in the USA, all feature 100-percent natural materials, and can all be spec’d as fully vegan products. This is really rare in the watch roll space, which is filled with products that rely heavily on leather or microfiber synthetics. If this is important to you, definitely give HCV’s family of watch rolls a look

Links referenced in the video:

• Hub City Vintage Watch Rolls
• The Unwound Podcast
• Otter Wax All-Natural Fabric Wax

Why Cupertino should hit the reset button on Apple Watch

Diagnosing the ills of Apple Watch through the lens of Clayton Christensen’s jobs-to-be-done framework, and prescribing a new path forward that can truly make a dent in the universe.

Those who’ve read my generalist’s review of Apple Watch will know that I was an early adopter of the platform. Though I had long ago given up wearing a wristwatch, I was intrigued by wearable technologies in general and the potential for Apple Watch in particular, so I pre-ordered a Watch in April of 2015 and, upon receipt of my 42 mm model with the stainless steel case, I wore it all but daily for the next year-and-a-half.

As noted in my review, which was written after four months with the device, there were a few things I really liked about Apple Watch and a few things I strongly disliked. On balance, I wasn’t fully won over, but I decided to soldier on with it, partly in the hope that future software updates would address my issues and partly in the expectation that the Watch would simply grow on me. After all, it had been years since I’d worn a watch of any kind, so it seemed reasonable to expect that it would take some time to re-acclimate to strapping a gadget onto my wrist every morning.

Here’s a look at my first generation 42 mm Apple Watch in stainless steel with a white fluoroelastomer band (note that the Bluetooth headphones were not included with the Watch). This combination retailed for $599 USD when it launched in April of 2015, but the price of this configuration was dropped to $549 with the launch of Apple Watch Series 2.

Months stretched into over a year with the Watch and, over that span, instead of warming to it, my feelings only grew cooler. For starters, Apple failed to release any meaningful improvements to its user experience: I dutifully upgraded my Watch with each “major” software update, but found that they only nibbled at the edges of the device’s fundamental shortcomings. It remained cumbersome to use, compelling apps remained MIA and I hated having yet another device to charge every night.

What surprised me, though, was that as grating as those issues were, the one that came to dominate my personal list of Apple Watch gripes was its aesthetic. The reason for my surprise was that I’ve never been a jewelry guy: For years, the only ornament I’d worn was my wedding ring and, back in the olden days when I did wear a watch, I invariably gravitated to the most basic, utilitarian styles. On top of all that, I’ve long been a fan of Apple’s spare, Bauhaus-inspired industrial design aesthetic. So if anyone were to like the look of Apple Watch—which is essentially an iPhone in miniature—it should have been me. And yet, as noted in my review, I felt that even my $599 stainless steel model “lacked a sense of occasion,” and I just couldn’t connect with it as a fashion statement, which is precisely the sort of thing I never envisioned myself saying.

It’s worth noting, too, that this lack of connection wasn’t for lack of effort or investment. Finding the Watch’s included fluoroelastomer band good for fitness but lacking in expression, I took advantage of the device’s fantastically well engineered mechanism for changing straps and, over time, purchased Apple’s Milanese Loop, Woven Nylon and Classic Buckle bands. Including the Watch itself, that meant I had spent over $900 in an effort to create a version of the device that I genuinely wanted to wear rather than a device that I felt obliged to wear. 

Of the various straps I purchased to customize my Watch, Apple’s “Classic Buckle” in saddle brown came the closest to winning me over. The quality of Apple’s straps and bracelets is beyond reproach, and the mechanism Apple developed to enable quick strap changes is fantastic. Unfortunately, Apple’s non-standard lugs and the need to keep the back of the Watch unobstructed to retain line-of-sight for the device’s optical heart rate sensor significantly limits strap options. As many a watch enthusiast will tell you, you’d be amazed at the difference a new strap can make, and changing out straps, bands and bracelets is half the fun. In its attempt to fulfill the role of a watch, Apple Watch definitely falls short on this criteria. (Image credit: Apple, Inc.)

As you might have guessed by now, I never quite got there. The saddle brown “Classic Buckle” almost had me convinced—its supple leather, fine stitching and high-polish stainless steel lugs (the part of the strap that attaches to the case) brought some much needed warmth and allure to the Watch. But its net effect on my soul was more smoldering campfire than raging inferno. By this point, I’d already stopped using my Watch to track workouts and occasionally left the house with a bare wrist. While I didn’t love my Apple Watch, I did find that, on those days without it, I missed its presence. This left me at a crossroads, which is where I might still be were it not for a fateful detour while shopping for Christmas gifts late last year.

Love at First Sight
By pure happenstance, I found myself at a Shinola store in downtown Portland on a cold and gloomy Saturday in November. I was only vaguely aware of the Shinola brand at that point and had no idea that they operated a retail store in Portland. Initially, I thought it was the sort of shop that’s fairly common here: a boutique featuring an eclectic mix of crafts and jewelry made by homegrown artisans. But, as I looked more closely at the goods on offer, it struck me that they exhibited a level of industrial design well beyond the norm for local boutiques. And then I came upon their watches...

It was one watch in particular, a model called the Runwell Chrono, that caught my eye. The ardor I had hoped I could kindle for my Apple Watch through the addition of straps and customized watch faces hit me the instant I saw the Runwell. At a retail price of $750, it was a fair bit more expensive than the starting price of my stainless steel Apple Watch; and, as an analog watch, its feature-set was infinitely more limited. So my desire for the Runwell Chrono didn’t make a whole lot of logical sense, yet I wanted it intensely and, after thinking it over for a day, I went ahead and bought one.

Here’s the watch I fell in love with at first sight on a fateful night in November: The 41 mm Shinola Runwell Chrono with a cool grey dial and brushed stainless steel case. The Apple Watch feature I used most frequently was its countdown timer to time the steeping of my morning cup of tea and my afternoon cup of joe (brewed via a French press). As someone who knew nothing about watches at the time, I never even considered that an analog timepiece could fill that role without forcing me to perform mental gymnastics until I encountered the beautiful Runwell Chrono. I should note that the watch is shown here on a killer aftermarket NATO strap from a company called ToxicNATOs—at just $18 USD, it was an incredibly cost effective way to personalize the watch to suit my style.

The day I picked up my Runwell Chrono is the last day I wore my Apple Watch. True to my OCD inclinations, I’ve since purchased three more analog watches, and a highlight of my mornings now is deciding which I’ll don for the day. That feeling of an “obligation to wear” that I mentioned earlier in connection with my Apple Watch is history, replaced by an eagerness to wear and use my quartet of beautiful little time machines. And it’s worth mentioning that this change in perspective is not a function of price: Of my analog watches, all but the Shinola cost considerably less than my Apple Watch. So, what’s going on here? Why would a self-professed geek and longtime fan of Apple’s design aesthetic eschew the future and instead embrace the now anachronistic “dumb” watch? I have a theory.

Understanding the Job to Be Done
Longtime readers of this site will know that I’m a big fan of Clayton Christensen’s “job to be done” approach to product creation. For those unfamiliar with this, Christensen is a Harvard Business School professor and longtime business consultant who’s perhaps best known for his book The Innovator’s Dilemma, which was published in the late-90s and introduced a generation of soon-to-be dotcom entrepreneurs to the theory of disruptive innovation. There’s been some debate in recent years as to the validity of this theory, but it’s proven its utility to me and his book remains the one and only business tome on my bookshelf.

Now, that being said, while I do periodically return to The Innovator’s Dilemma to help provoke big-picture thinking, I find myself referencing Christensen’s jobs-to-be-done product creation ethos with much greater frequency. I could make a feeble attempt at explaining it, but better to let the man himself talk you through it:

In short, McDonald’s assumed that customers were primarily buying milkshakes for their flavor and nutrition—seemingly safe assumptions—but efforts to boost sales through improvements to these attributes had little impact. So McDonald’s brought Christensen and his team in to help and, through on-the-ground observation and one-on-one interviews, they came to understand that fully half of all milkshake buyers primarily purchased the product to keep them occupied and interested during their morning commutes to work. According to these customers, the leading requirements for this job included easy consumption with one hand; an item that would take about as long as their commute to fully consume; and staying power, meaning that it should keep them full past 10am. Flavor mattered, but it was table stakes—helping car commuters stave off boredom was where the opportunity for differentiation and growth lay.

By re-formulating their milkshakes to deliver on the actual job that customers were hiring the product to do—for example, by incorporating chunks of fruit into their milkshakes, not to make them healthier, but to make them more unpredictable and interesting to consume—Christensen claims that McDonald’s saw a 4x increase in sales. Another critical insight that Christensen’s team brought to light was that the market opportunity for milkshakes was far larger than McDonald’s had previously recognized. Their competitive set was not milkshakes from Burger King or Wendy’s, it was the universe of breakfast items that could be consumed on-the-go—from bagels to bananas—meaning that the potential return from investing in innovation against milkshakes was significantly greater than McDonald’s had anticipated.

So, what does all this have to do with Apple Watch? Well, I had assumed that my creeping disaffection for the device was simply down to my personal preferences in fashion and function. But in the months following my review, I noticed an increasing volume of tweets and blog posts expressing sentiments regarding the Watch that were strikingly similar to my own (this was particularly true in February of 2016, as people who received Apple Watch as a holiday gift realized that they didn’t particularly like it). This suggested that the issue went beyond a simple matter of individual taste, which encouraged me to re-examine my experience with Apple Watch through the lens of Christensen’s jobs-to-be-done ethos.

A Rose by Any Other Name
As the name and form of the device suggest, the folks in Cupertino believed Apple Watch would subsume the role of a wristwatch—a seemingly safe assumption given that Apple Watch would have to gentrify the same physical real-estate on the body. But I believe that, in this core assumption, Apple has made the same mistake that McDonald’s initially made in assuming that their competition was other milkshakes. If you compare the reasons people hire a wristwatch to the aspects of Apple Watch that proponents value, it becomes clear that these are two very different jobs with two very different sets of qualifications.

Let’s start with the conventional watch: Why do people hire a wristwatch today? This snippet from a New York Times Magazine article published in June of 2015 and titled Can the Swiss Watchmaker Survive the Digital Age? eloquently summarizes the consensus view:

These days, nobody needs a watch to know the time. Time is all around us, displayed on every computer, phone and microwave oven. The Swiss watchmakers realize this. They market their mechanical watches as not only accurate but also deeply symbolic. For those willing to spend $30,000, a traditional Swiss watch marks its owner as a man or woman who appreciates quality, artistry and ingenuity (and, of course, as a wealthy and conspicuous consumer). Wearing a mechanical watch today makes an explicitly antidigital statement, embracing the long pedigree of a device that predates not only computers but electricity itself. It tells the time but is timeless. “A mechanical watch,” Jean-Claude Biver, the chief executive of TAG Heuer, said, “is a piece of eternity in a box.”

This is something of a tangent, but I feel compelled to comment on Jean-Claude Biver’s quote at the end of that snippet—it might sound like a whole lot of hot air, but these notions of timelessness and “eternity in a box” have deeply resonated with me. We live in an age in which our machines penalize us for use: The battery life indicator on our phones shrinks with each glance at the status bar and, whether you drive an internal combustion or electric car, each press of the accelerator diminishes your range.

A self-winding “automatic” watch, on the other hand, is singular amongst machines in that it rewards use by charging itself with each movement of your arm—no batteries required. I’ve found this symbiosis of man and machine, and the idea that, in theory at least, an automatic will run forever so long as I keep wearing it, both poignant and liberating. Which explains why my auto-winding watches get a lot more wrist-time these days than my quartz-based Shinola—the watch I fell for at first sight that, unfortunately, requires a battery (to be fair, though, the two year replacement interval of the battery in my Shinola is a heck of a lot easier to live with than the nightly charging required for Apple Watch).

Of the automatic watches I’ve purchased since falling headlong into the world of mechanical watch enthusiasm, this is my favorite: The Seiko 6117-6400 World Time circa 1972 (for the strap junkies in the house, it’s shown here on a dark clay calfskin strap from Hodinkee). I managed to find this gem via a site called Watchuseek, which features an incredibly popular forum for veteran and aspiring watch geeks alike. Rather than going into detail on the 6117-6400 here, I’ll direct anyone who’s interested to an excellent backgrounder published by yet another fantastic site for watch enthusiasts called Analog/Shift. I can’t help but smile every time I look at this beauty—it just makes me feel good, and that’s the real job most anyone buying an analog watch today is hiring it to do.

My pre-mechanical-watch-wearing-self would have pooh-poohed Biver’s sentiment, but the proof is in the wearing. Along those lines, and getting back to the substance of the snippet, I would argue that, today, this job of serving as a deeply symbolic and highly visible totem of one’s values applies not only to $30,000 Swiss timepieces, but to watches at all price points. After all, as the article attests, “nobody needs a watch to know the time,” so whether you’re rocking a utilitarian $200 Seiko SKX007 or an unapologetically OTT $87,500 Ulysse Nardin Freak Cruiser, for the overwhelming majority of contemporary buyers, timekeeping is very much a secondary requirement to self expression. If you need any more evidence to back this up, just ask any watch fan in your life why he or she purchased the piece they’re wearing at that moment, and you’re almost certain to hear some variation of: “It makes me feel good.” In other words, when it comes to watches, it’s less about what it does and more about how it makes you feel.

Talk to fans of smartwatches, on the other hand, and the job they describe is markedly different. I think this is captured well by Jim Dalrymple, a longtime tech writer who wrote one of the most widely shared reviews of the first-generation Apple Watch. Here’s how he opened his review, which was published in June of 2015:

I have been reporting on Apple for more than 20 years now, and in all that time no product has had such an impact on my life as this little piece of hardware and software. I don’t say that for dramatic effect, it has had a profound effect on the way I live.

After a lifetime of not particularly healthy living, Dalrymple was able to shed 40-plus pounds over a matter of months—an accomplishment he attributes in large part to Apple Watch and an associated software platform called HealthKit. As he notes in a follow-up piece, “People have asked if those two Apple technologies have really helped me lose over 40 pounds … I am responsible for losing the weight, but I couldn’t have done it without the information provided by Apple Watch and HealthKit.”

Jim Dalrymple hasn’t shared any before-and-after photos of his Apple Watch and HealthKit-aided transformation, but I was able to pull together this comparison via a photo from before his life change on the left (I wasn’t able to pin down a date, but it’s definitely pre-Apple Watch) and after on the right. As Dalrymple notes in his review of Apple Watch, “People have asked if those two Apple technologies [Apple Watch and HealthKit] have really helped me lose over 40 pounds … I am responsible for losing the weight, but I couldn’t have done it without the information provided by Apple Watch and HealthKit.” (Images via Jim Dalrymple)

And, in case you think this reason for loving Apple Watch applies only to the geeky tech bloggers of the world, I refer you to this more recent review of Apple Watch Series 2 by a very different sort of blogger named Kath, who describes herself as “a Registered Dietician, healthy eater, and mom from Charlottesville, VA”: Why I Love My Apple Watch. Of the eight reasons Kath cites, her top three are rooted in fitness tracking, and all eight involve specific features of the Watch, such as its ability to alert her to notifications received on her smartphone.

Reading positive reviews of Apple Watch like these, a consistent theme that emerges is that the job satisfied buyers have found for the device has little to do with the way it makes them feel as an object, and almost everything to do with its functionality—particularly, its functionality as an activity and fitness tracker. To this point, the closing to Kath’s review is telling—she writes, “…I do hear there are some new generation Fitbits and things that do similar things! Do you have an activity tracker? Love it?” So, even though Kath refers to the device as Apple Watch throughout her review, it’s evident that she views it not as a watch, but as an activity tracker.

In summary, like McDonald’s, which initially assumed that their competitive set for milkshakes was other milkshakes, Apple has conceived Apple Watch around the assumption that their competitive set is other watches. Reading positive reviews like Kath’s and Dalrymple’s—and re-examining my own, more ambivalent experience—it’s clear that this assumption is incorrect.

Why Understanding the Job to Be Done Matters
At this point you might be asking, why does it matter? While I and others who seem to fall squarely into the target audience for the device have found it wanting, clearly, there are people out there who are very happy with Apple Watch. Who cares if the reasons they like it have nothing to do with its “watch-y-ness” and everything to do with its capabilities as an activity tracker?

As a product manager, the reason to care is that this mis-alignment between your job description—aka the brief—and the actual job people out in the real world are hiring your product to do is a red flag signaling missed opportunity. As Christensen noted, his team was able to help McDonalds increase milkshake sales four-fold by simply aligning the brief for the product to its actual job to be done. I believe Apple has a similar sort of opportunity with Apple Watch, but with an exponentially greater potential return—both financially and in terms of societal impact.

The image above shows Apple CEO Tim Cook at the unveiling of Apple Watch Series 2 this past September. It cites data from a third-party research firm indicating that, with only three calendar quarters of sales for Apple Watch in 2015, Apple had already become the world’s second biggest watch seller by revenue. Some pundits interpreted this as a positive and others as a negative, but it certainly reinforces the notion that Cupertino conceived Apple Watch around the assumption that their competitive set was—and still remains—other watchmakers. The problem is, when viewing Apple Watch through the lens of Clayton Christensen’s customer-centered jobs-to-be-done ethos, it becomes evident that buyers aren’t hiring the device for its “watch-y-ness,” but for its capabilities as an activity tracker. For a product manager, this sort of mis-alignment between your job description—aka the brief—and the actual job people out in the real world are hiring your product to do is a red flag signaling missed opportunity. (Image credit: Apple, Inc.)

I wish I could quantify the potential financial upside, but I’d only be guessing. That’s in part because the market for wearable technologies is still nascent, and in part because Apple has never shared concrete sales data for Apple Watch. Those willing to take Apple CEO Tim Cook’s unsubstantiated pronouncements about Apple Watch at face value herald it as a breakthrough success, while others who’ve looked at the fragments of available data have concluded it’s a flop. Even one of the most oft cited Apple Watch proponents, former tech journalist and current venture capitalist M.G. Siegler, is circumspect when it comes to the device’s prospects. Citing estimates as to its first-year sales, Siegler describes Apple Watch as “a pretty great business [that’s] bigger than most businesses,” but acknowledges that “it has to get better than it is now” and suggests that “if the value proposition isn’t consistently raised, this first year of sales may be the equivalent of a movie that opens to huge business, then falls 60% in its second weekend in release, then even more in its third weekend.”

As someone who, like Siegler, wants to see Apple succeed, I agree that Apple Watch must get better than it is now. And, as a product manager who knows that a product is only as good as its brief, I believe that won’t happen until Apple shifts its brief away from making a better watch and towards creating an insanely great activity tracker.

A Thousand No’s for Every Yes
Close observer’s of Apple’s product updates will no doubt be yelling at their screens by now, calling me a numbskull for failing to acknowledge that Apple has already repositioned Apple Watch as a fitness tracker with the introduction of “Series 2” last September. Here’s a snippet from Apple’s press release announcing that update:

Apple Watch Series 2 is packed with incredible fitness and health capabilities including a water resistance 50 meter rating for swimming, and built-in GPS so users can now run without an iPhone.

While these new capabilities may make Apple Watch a more viable option as a fitness tracker for some, the problem with Apple Watch was never a lack of features. Instead, the problem is that it does too many things—starting with trying to be a watch replacement—and these additions do nothing to address that core failing.

This is particularly surprising coming from a company that celebrates its willingness to nix features, and that’s declared on more than one occasion that “there are a thousand ‘no’s’ for every ‘yes’.” That principle seems to apply to the teams working on Mac hardware to a draconian degree, but to the Apple Watch team, not so much.

Okay, so if I were CEO for a day, what would I say no to? I’m glad you asked…

Say NO to being a watch.
I may have beat this point to death already, but I think it’s worth emphasizing because this one decision has enormous downstream repercussions on the form and function of the device. To wit, Apple Watch’s screen mimics the dimensions of an analog watch dial and its case closely aligns to the physical dimensions of modern-day mechanical wristwatches. In addition, just like a conventional timepiece, Apple Watch is fastened to the wrist by way of straps that are not integral to the device itself, but can be interchanged with other straps of varying styles.

But what if Apple didn’t set out to mimic a watch and instead started from a clean slate, knowing that the primary job to be done by the device was to accurately track its wearer’s activity 24 hours a day, 365 days a year? For starters, I believe such a device could do without a screen, instead relaying all data to the wearer’s smartphone and relying on it for any tasks requiring a graphical interface. Eliminating the screen would dramatically reduce the power requirements of our next-gen wearable, enabling Apple to use its battery capacity in other ways—for example, by simply extending battery life or by shrinking its physical dimensions.

Speaking of shrinking, forgoing the screen, as well as the dimensional and fastening conventions of a wristwatch, would also free Apple’s designers to pursue a more diminutive form factor that could be worn alongside a conventional timepiece rather than forcing prospective buyers into an either-or decision. If this idea of wearing a watch on one wrist and an activity tracker on the other sounds outlandish to you, take a few minutes to observe people’s wrists the next time you travel through a major airport—I think you’ll be surprised by how many folks are already doing this, not to mention the even larger population who wear a watch on one wrist and some manner of prominent bracelet or bangle on the other. In short, this doesn’t need to be the zero sum game between watch and activity tracker that Apple’s made it out to be.

Finally, by eliminating the screen and its associated touch interface—which would in turn significantly reduce the compute and energy requirements of the device—Apple could also significantly reduce its price. This is important because of the obvious association between price and demand, but, more critically, because a lower price would bring the device and its benefits within reach of more people. In fact, none other than Apple CEO Tim Cook has made the argument for getting the price of Apple Watch down to a more accessible level: While discussing the Watch and HealthKit during an interview at Startup Fest Europe last May, Cook declared that “we believe that health is something that is a huge problem in the world—a huge issue—and we think it is ripe for simplicity and sort of a new view, and we’d like to contribute to that.”

Yes, Apple has already reduced the price of its base Watch model to $269, but to truly have an impact on health around the world—and not just in the wealthy nations of the world—the Watch needs to get down to a sub-$100 price point as soon as possible.

These might sound like impossible requirements, but it turns out that Apple has been shipping a device designed around a very similar set of constraints for over a decade: The iPod Shuffle. When it was introduced way back in 2005, the screen-less, single-purpose, plastic-bodied Shuffle with 1GB of storage retailed for $149 USD. That dropped to $99 by 2006 and, today, you can purchase a new 2GB iPod Shuffle from Apple for $49. So, with a focused brief, Apple can absolutely deliver a simple, highly desirable and highly accessible product for the masses. These values need to become priorities for the device currently known as Apple Watch.

Say NO to non-essential features.
This is closely related to the point above regarding price point accessibility, but I believe eliminating non-essential features will not only make our next-gen wearable cheaper, it’ll make it better.

What features would I eliminate? Basically, anything that doesn’t contribute to making the device an insanely great activity tracker. So, out would go the ability to run apps on the device (since it wouldn’t have a screen, the concept of on-device apps would be moot anyway); the ability to play music from the device; the ability to store or view photos on the device; the ability to initiate or receive phone calls or messages via the device; and the ability to use the device to make contact-less payments. Some of these features are cool, but they all detract from the core job-to-be-done by adding cost, complexity or a combination of the two, and they can all be done more effectively via a smartphone.

Because the ability to track strain and recovery across the entirety of a wearer’s life—day and night—is a key element of WHOOP’s value proposition, the company had to come up with a way to enable charging of their WHOOP Strap while it was being worn. The solution they devised is quite clever: Rather than charge the Strap directly, users charge an external battery pack that can stay plugged into your nightstand while you’re away from home. At night, when the pack is fully charged, you unplug it from the outlet and slide it directly onto your WHOOP Strap, enabling you to charge the Strap without ever taking it off. This is somewhat similar to the charging mechanism Apple developed for their AirPods wireless headphones—like the WHOOP Strap, they aren’t charged directly but via a charging case. Of course, truly wireless charging over a distance would offer the greatest convenience, but WHOOP’s concept is a good intermediate approach that Apple should consider for a next-gen activity-tracker. (Image credit: WHOOP)

With those non-essentials out of the way, I’d have the product team focus all of its energies on five key priorities: Making the device small and comfortable enough to be worn 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; enabling it to be charged while it’s being worn (see the WHOOP Strap for one way to do this); making the device the most capable and accurate in the industry at sensing and tracking the physiological signals associated with health and wellness over time; developing a dead simple haptic “interface” for interaction with the device; and getting its price to no more than $149 USD at launch, and to less than $100 USD within three years of launch.

Say NO to iPhone exclusivity.
This one is simple: If Tim Cook means it when he says “health is something that is a huge problem in the world” and that he’d like to see Apple contribute to solving the problem, Apple’s activity tracker must work with Android devices, which comprised 81.7% of global smartphone sales in the fourth quarter of 2016.

While some may see this as a capitulation, I see tremendous upside for Apple in this shift. Much in the way that iPod served as a Trojan Horse into the Wintel hegemony, helping Apple win back PC market share through the 2000s, our re-imagined activity tracker would introduce the benefits of Apple’s ecosystem to a generation that’s grown up with Android, creating an opportunity to spur iPhone sales.

For this to Trojan Horse to have any kick, however, Apple needs to do one more thing...

Say YES to a renewed commitment to software.
One thing shared between Jim Dalrymple’s glowing review of Apple Watch and Tim Cook’s commentary on the device from Startup Fest Europe is that they both mentioned a software platform called HealthKit.

HealthKit isn’t an app, but a framework created by Apple that developers can use to store activity and fitness data captured by their apps. This structured, secure and centralized repository enables health and fitness apps to share data with each other, while offering end-users visibility and control over that inter-app sharing. As end-users, we don’t directly interact with HealthKit—instead, for the vast majority of iPhone users, our window into that data is the Health app that comes bundled with iOS. And herein lies the problem, because the Health app is, in a literal sense, dumb.

Here’s what Apple’s Health app looked like in its first incarnation: It offered an interface only an actuary could love. Unfortunately, while the app’s front-end has become friendlier, it remains little more than a dashboard for information that, on its own, is of almost no value. To unlock the sort of world-changing potential that Tim Cook talks about, Health must evolve from a dumb data repository to a smart, individually tailored health advisor. While that’s no easy task, Apple is among the few companies with the engineering chops and appreciation for human behavior necessary to deliver on this vision—but it’s going to take a much bigger commitment to software and artificial intelligence in the health space. (Image credit: Apple, Inc.)

I should note that it has at least improved aesthetically since the version Dalrymple used while reviewing Apple Watch back in 2015. In my experience, that first iteration of the app offered a UI that only an actuary could love. Its interface is friendlier now, but its fundamental failing has not been addressed, which is that the Health app remains a dumb data repository rather than a source of health insights. To explain what I mean here, let me once again quote from Dalrymple’s review of Apple Watch:

I started using HealthKit every day to see how different things would affect my weight loss and generally how I felt. Did I lose more weight walking in the morning or the afternoon? What foods made me gain weight? Should I skip meals and hope that helps with weight loss? I hesitate to say I became obsessed, but I did become more aware of what I did and how it affected me, both physically and mentally.

As noted earlier, with the help of Apple Watch and HealthKit, Dalrymple lost 42.4 pounds over the course of 10 months. This is a textbook example of the potential for technology to improve health in deeply meaningful ways. But here’s the key: Dalrymple understood that he had to connect the dots between his behavior, the data captured by his Apple Watch and the outcomes he was experiencing. As cited above, he kept track of things like whether he lost more weight by walking in the morning or the afternoon and, generally speaking, became more aware of how physical activity influenced him, “both physically and mentally.”

Dalrymple was sufficiently motivated to keep track of all of these associations manually, which is fortunate because Apple’s Health app offers no help in this department. In its current incarnation, it’s little more than a dashboard that displays information that, on its own, is of almost no value. What if, instead of being a dumb repository, Health became a smart advisor? So, in Dalrymple’s scenario, it could have connected the dots on his behalf and advised that, for him, morning walks appear to contribute to greater weight loss than afternoon walks. I’m not privy to Dalrymple’s activity and fitness data so that’s a hypothetical example, but hopefully you get my drift.

Here’s another example, in this case from my own review of Apple Watch: 

I’ve also found that my Watch can give me advance warning of illness. On two occasions, I noticed that my heart rate was roughly five beats-per-minute higher than it would normally be during a given activity. I wasn’t exhibiting any outward signs of sickness at the time of these measurements, but, on both occasions, I began to show typical cold symptoms within a couple of days.

I was only aware of this because I’m a data geek and was keeping track of changes in my heart rate over time. Imagine how useful the Health app could be to the non-data geeks of the world if it could pro-actively share insights like these. For example, the app could have told me that I’m exhibiting early signs of a cold and pointed me to a credible reference on effective interventions, thereby helping me to moderate the severity or duration of my symptoms.

Shown here is the Today screen as it appears now in iOS 10. This currently under-utilized real estate would be a great place to surface contextual recommendations related to your health and fitness. (Image credit: iDownloadBlog.com)

Along these lines, the “Today” screen of iOS, which currently displays things like the weather, upcoming calendar events and news stories that Apple thinks I might be interested in, should be updated to include individually tailored suggestions related to health and fitness. For example, based on data from my next-gen Apple wearable—which I’d be able to wear while sleeping to track sleep quality—combined with my health history and my calendar, my phone might advise me to switch my run to the morning instead of my typical afternoon slot in order to maximize productivity for the day.

Here’s another scenario that would help improve my life: Knowing, based on my calendar or the travel itineraries I’ve received via email, that I have a trip to Japan coming up in two weeks, the Health app could offer me a revised sleep schedule that incrementally acclimatizes me to that new time zone. This wouldn’t be a cookie-cutter plan—instead, it would be tailored specifically to my needs based on my historical sleep and health data. If I were to accept the suggestion, the phone would automatically edit my “do not disturb” and alarm settings, eliminating the need for any manual interventions on my part. The net result would be a dramatic reduction in my jet lag while on the ground in Japan, enabling a much more productive and enjoyable trip.

The bottom line here is that hardware is only one piece of the puzzle. Whereas Apple currently appears to be devoting about 80% of their efforts in the health space towards hardware and 20% towards software (and that’s a generous assessment), I believe that split needs to be closer to 50/50 in order to unlock the sort of world-changing potential that Tim Cook talks about.

Conclusion
Wow, if you’ve made it this far, I’m impressed—thanks for sticking with me! If you’re wondering why in the world I put so much energy into a piece that has a snowball’s chance in hell of getting in front of anyone at Apple who might actually read it and be in a position to effect change, it’s because I agree with Tim Cook that health is a critical global issue and that Apple is uniquely positioned to make a meaningful dent in the problem.

A landmark 2005 report published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that “After remaining relatively stable in the 1960s and 1970s, the prevalence of obesity among adults in the United States increased by approximately 50 percent per decade throughout the 1980s and 1990s,” such that “Two thirds of adults in the United States today are obese or overweight.” In an interview with the NY Times, one of the report’s authors spoke to the potential consequences:

“Obesity is such that this generation of children could be the first basically in the history of the United States to live less healthful and shorter lives than their parents,” said Dr. David S. Ludwig, director of the obesity program at Children’s Hospital Boston, and one of the authors of the report … “We’re in the quiet before the storm,” Dr. Ludwig said. “It’s like what happens if suddenly a massive number of young children started chain smoking. At first you wouldn’t see much public health impact.” He added, “But years later it would translate into emphysema, heart disease and cancer.”

Aside from the negative impacts on the well-being of affected individuals and their loved ones, obesity is also hurting the U.S. economy, according to a 2015 report from Bloomberg Businessweek. The magazine cites research from Cornell University economics professor John Cawley, indicating that “obesity raised medical-care costs by $315.8 billion in 2010,” an inflation adjusted increase of 48 percent compared to 2005. And, lest you think that burden falls only on those who are obese, according to Cawley, “the costs are usually paid by private and public health insurance, meaning that leaner people are subsidizing those with less healthy diets.” In other words, “All of us are paying these costs."

And while this crisis is particularly acute in the West in general and the United States in particular, it is increasingly a global issue. According to the World Health Organization, “worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980” and, today, “overweight and obesity are linked to more deaths worldwide than underweight.” 

The maddening thing about this is that, as the WHO rather dryly notes, “Overweight and obesity, as well as their related noncommunicable diseases, are largely preventable.” I don’t believe that wearable, activity tracking tech is the panacea for this pandemic, but I’ve read and heard enough accounts like Dalrymple’s to be convinced that it can be a significant part of the solution.

Speaking of solutions, the WHO’s recommendation to governments is quite simple: “make regular physical activity and healthier dietary choices available, affordable and easily accessible to everyone, particularly to the poorest individuals.” To me, this should become the mantra adopted by the Apple Watch team: Stop trying to make a next-generation watch, and focus instead on creating a next-generation activity tracker—Health app included—that’s “available, affordable and easily accessible to everyone,” and doesn’t just surface data but provides ongoing, individually tailored coaching that helps its users lead healthier, more productive lives.

Various companies have the chops to tackle parts of this enigma, which is equal parts tech and human behavior. Google comes to mind most immediately given their deep capabilities in cloud services and artificial intelligence, as does Facebook for their expertise in social influence, but I believe only Apple has the blend of engineering prowess and appreciation for the humanities—the intersection of technology and the liberal arts that Steve Jobs often emphasized—necessary to pull this off at scale. To do so, however, the company will need to “think different” about their approach to Apple Watch. For all our sakes, here’s to hoping they find the courage to start fresh and truly confront the most significant global health challenge of our time.

Agree? Disagree? Have questions? Let’s continue the conversation on Twitter @edotkim.

WTF is a product manager?: Follow-up, part one...

I received way more feedback to my post explaining what exactly a product manager does than I had anticipated—a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to share thoughts, feedback and questions.

And speaking of questions, there were lots of good ones, the majority of which touched on a few recurring themes. I had originally intended to post one all encompassing follow-up in which I addressed each of them, but, given how long it’s taken me to get through just one answer, I decided to go ahead and publish my responses piecemeal. Apologies for the glacial pace of my replies!

Before diving into my first piece of follow-up, however, I wanted to share two film recommendations as we head into the weekend. The first, which is still in theaters, is called BALLET 422 and it “takes us backstage at the New York City Ballet as Justin Peck, a young up-and-coming choreographer, crafts a new work.”

I’ve never been a particularly big fan of ballet, but I found this film exhilarating, both in its depiction of the remarkable artistry and athleticism of the dancers, and in the way it captures the process of creation: its loneliness, its conflicts, its demands for partnership and its glorious moments of shared discovery. I think anyone working in product management will see parallels with their world and may come away with learnings that can be applied to their day jobs, particularly around the ability to balance individual vision and group collaboration.

If you’re a product manager in search of filmic inspiration this weekend, I’d strongly suggest BALLET 422, which is in theaters now, and Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview, which is available on Netflix streaming. Images from BALLET 422 (left) and Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview (right).

The second film is Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview. Though it hit theaters in the wake of Steve Jobs’ death in late 2011, the interview in question actually took place in 1996. The interviewer, Robert X. Cringely, captures his subject at a unique moment in time, when Jobs—who was never one for retrospection—was willing to talk candidly about his history at Apple, and the formative experiences that shaped his views on product creation, technology and leadership. What’s remarkable, given how long ago the interview took place, is how timely it remains in content, if not in video quality. Unfortunately, Steve Jobs: The Lost Interview is no longer available for purchase via any of the leading digital media services, but it is available for streaming on Netflix [Note: Sadly, The Lost Interview is no longer available on Netflix].

Okay, so on to follow-up, part one...

@edotkim Loved the prod mgmt post. Curious to hear your take on what constrains the prod mgr from above and how products get resources.

— Ryan Singer (@rjs) January 19, 2015

This is a really interesting question from Ryan Singer at Basecamp, formerly known as 37signals (my old stomping grounds!).

For people who’ve only ever worked at start-ups or very small companies, the answer may seem self-evident: If you need resources you ask the founder, and he or she will give you a yea or nay right then and there. But for anyone who’s worked at a larger firm—whether that firm deals in bits or in bolts—Ryan’s question will no doubt conjure dark memories of the Rube Goldberg-esque organizational apparatus nestled at the heart of most megacorps.

I have plenty of stories I could share about navigating that maze, but that’s another topic for another time. Getting back to Ryan’s question, I’ll start with the first half: The force that most frequently constrains a product manager—from above or otherwise—is inertia. This is because most individuals dislike change and, barring a strong opposing force from above, this individual antipathy seeps into a corporation’s broader culture, smothering any inclination towards innovation.

Even in companies with a history of risk-taking, it can be incredibly difficult to get a new idea over the top. That’s because, while many people love to talk about innovation and taking chances, very few have the courage to act when that action might jeopardize their personal financial security or career prospects. It’s also true that there are simply a lot of fucking intellectually lazy people in the world who can’t be bothered to learn anything new.

Sadly, our culture gives these people plenty of cover: Expressions like “Don’t rock the boat,” and “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” and “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” cloak inaction under a veneer of wisdom. But these bromides no longer hold water—I never thought I’d quote Mark Zuckerberg, but he’s spoken powerfully on this topic and, critically, has shown a willingness to back up his words with actions:

“The biggest risk is not taking any risk... In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”

It’s important to emphasize that I’m not suggesting companies take risks willy-nilly. As someone who co-managed a micro start-up in 37signals, I know that everything a company does comes with very real costs in time, attention and capital. And, as someone who’s managed multi-million unit product lines at Nike, I’m well aware that product leaders must thoroughly consider the pros and cons of any potential opportunity before acting. But too many companies today are in perpetual harvest mode, seeking to eek out every last drop of value from existing products and processes before investing in better, higher value solutions.

Spend any time studying Apple’s product cycles and it quickly becomes evident that the company maintains a highly structured approach to its cadence of evolutionary and revolutionary updates. The strong sales of established lines enables investment in new, high-risk products that start at low volumes, but grow to subsume previously established franchises. Their offset invest/harvest/divest cadence also helps to mitigate any downside impacts associated with weaker-than-anticipated adoption within any one product line. This willingness to invest in new concepts and, just as importantly, divest of older ones, is a critical contributor to Apple’s continued success in the hyper-competitive consumer electronics space.

The problem with this seemingly prudent approach is that, by the time they’re done sucking blood from their precious stones, the marketplace has moved on and left these risk averse companies in the dust. Just ask the folks at Kodak or Blockbuster how well a strategy of perpetual harvest (the corporate euphemism for this is, “we’re focusing on our core businesses”) worked out for them. And yet, though cautionary tales illustrating the risk of not taking risks abound, sticking with the status quo remains the default mode within most organizations.

This may lead you to ask a new question, namely, how can I convince my company to be more open to risk? This has become a popular topic amongst business journalists and management consultants in recent years, with leading players like Accenture, The Economist, Harvard Business Review and McKinsey devoting much brainpower to the discovery of an answer. I know this is going to sound defeatist, but, in my experience, if a company’s leadership doesn’t already have a healthy appetite for risk, no amount of kicking, screaming or reasoned argument from below will be sufficient to effect change. As such, my advice to those who feel consistently hamstrung by organizational inertia is to find a new job at a company that’s shown a willingness to take smart chances or take the plunge and start a company of your own.

Now for the second part of Ryan’s question: How do products get resources? The specifics will vary from company to company, but the CliffsNotes version is pretty straightforward: Make a compelling case for your product.

In some companies this will entail lots of quantitative research, such as data on historical sales of related products, sales or usage trends across your broader market or important behavioral trends. For example, during my time in the ad world, my team successfully persuaded a large client to pursue a big-budget second-screen marketing campaign based in large part on behavioral research showing that second-screen viewing was exploding in popularity amongst their target audience. This supporting data gave our client the confidence to fund what was initially viewed as a risky proposition, and their return was an innovative campaign that delivered engagement levels far beyond industry norms.

Oftentimes, however, you’ll need a blend of facts and feelings to get a new product concept funded. For instance, at Nike, a pearl of wisdom from Phil Knight that anyone involved in product creation lives by is: “Always listen to the voice of the athlete.” This maxim is part of the bedrock of the company’s culture, so qualitative feedback from athletes (i.e. customers) holds tremendous sway at the Swoosh—much more so than it would at a more analytically driven company, such as Google. But, that being said, in order to get the highly unconventional Nike LunarGlide+ running shoe concept through the company’s organizational matrix, I had to buttress the positive feedback we received from early focus groups and wear tests with copious data on marketplace trends, as well as findings from our Sport Research Lab, which showed that the shoe offered quantitatively unique performance benefits.

You may be surprised to learn that there was no product manager’s handbook at Nike that walked me through the steps to success. Perhaps at some companies there is, but my experience tells me that it wouldn’t have been much use anyway, because I’ve yet to see two product creation scenarios play out in precisely the same way. I think this ability to empathize with and address the needs, questions and doubts of internal stakeholders is as crucial to the success of a product manager as is his or her ability to empathize with and address the needs of prospective customers. Because, if you can’t do the former, you’ll never get the opportunity to deliver on the latter.

I hope this helps and, as ever, let’s keep the conversation going on Twitter @edotkim.

WTF is a product manager?

It’s a good question. Before joining Nike back in 2007 as a product line manager, or PLM, within the company’s Running Footwear category, I had no idea that such a job existed. What a designer does is pretty straightforward: he or she designs a product, which includes a strong say into how that product works. What an engineer or developer does is also largely self-evident: he or she figures out the best way to realize a product concept, whether it’s with bits or with bolts. But a product manager: WTF?

My business card from my first stint at Nike, during which I served as a global product line manager, or PLM, in the company’s Running Footwear category. FYI: My phone number has changed since this card was issued—if you want to get in touch, the best way to reach me is on Twitter @edotkim.

Before diving in, I should note that this piece is based largely on my experiences at Nike. But my years in the digital design and advertising worlds gives me the confidence to say that the description below applies across industries, and spans the digital/linear divide as well. In other words, the broad strokes of what I describe below are as applicable to a product manager at a physical goods company, such as Proctor & Gamble, as they are to a product manager at a digital goods company, such as Twitter.

Okay, so if a designer designs and a developer develops, what does a product manager do? The most succinct answer I can give is this: A product manager defines the job that a product must do in order to succeed.

What does this entail? Usually, this definition is captured in the form of a brief, which defines the what of the job, along with relevant information regarding the target audience, context on market positioning and an indication of success measures (e.g. brand impact, sales, downloads, engagement, etc.).

Critically, what a good brief does not do is address the how of the job. That’s because any good product manager recognizes that the how must be left to the designer and developer to define. This is an enormous oversimplification, but one way to think about this is that the product manager outlines a job opportunity in the form of a question—e.g. Can we solve problem X for customer Y?—and the designer and developer apply their domain expertise towards answering that question in the most compelling way possible.

An example I’ve used in the past is that the designers and developers at Nike are so good that they could create a shoe that looks like a boat, yet still offers the performance and comfort of cutting edge athletic footwear. But if it turns out that there’s no market for shoes that look like boats, that product would fail—regardless of its beauty or functionality. In short, it doesn’t matter if the answer is right if the question you set out to answer is wrong. It’s the job of the product manager to ensure that the product team is working to answer the right question(s).

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Now, a question you may be asking at this point is: Does a company really need a person dedicated to the product manager role? Couldn’t a designer or developer figure out the job that their product must do on their own? Well, yes and no.

Say you’re a very small operation with an equally small product line that doesn’t change very often—for example, the boutique watchmaker Autodromo, which introduces just one new product per year. In such cases it’s often necessary for staffers to wear multiple hats, and it’s also very often the case that people who start passion projects like Autodromo enter into such endeavors with a clear preconception of the products they intend to create. A dedicated product manager would be superfluous in this context.

But then you have bigger companies—e.g. Nike, Apple, Facebook, et al.—that offer a wider range of products, in higher volumes and in fast moving industries. In such cases, if a designer or developer were to try to keep up with all of the inputs underpinning the job that their product must do on a version-by-version basis, he or she wouldn’t have any time left to design or develop. It’s in these contexts that a dedicated product manager becomes essential.

Before moving on, I’d like to dispel a couple of common misperceptions about the product manager role. First, the product manager doesn’t simply hand-off a product brief and then kick up his or her heels until the designer and developer come back with a concept. Creating a product is an iterative process—a path that seems promising one day may prove to be a blind alley the next, and it’s not unusual for a team to debate the core tenets of a brief well into this journey. A good product manager will remain engaged from start to finish, answering questions as they arise, re-assessing assumptions when warranted and doing whatever it takes to get his or her team the resources they need to effectively deliver on the brief.

On the flip side, the designer and developer aren’t just passive consumers of the product manager’s brief. In every successful project I’ve been part of, the ultimate product brief was created in collaboration with my teammates in design and development. As noted above, it’s impractical to expect the designer or developer to keep up with markets and user needs to the degree that a product manager must, but it is imperative that the designer and developer believe the core question they’re being asked to answer is the right one. And the best way I’ve found to cultivate this shared belief is to formulate that question in partnership with the people who will be asked to answer it.

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Okay, so a product manager defines the job that a product must do in order to succeed, and his or her primary deliverable is a product brief. What kind of knowledge base is required to deliver on these responsibilities? I’m glad you asked. The product manager role demands expertise across a few key domains, as illustrated below:

The product manager role sits at the intersection of three key domains of knowledge and expertise: your marketplace, your target end-user and your company’s brand.

I know, I know, Venn diagrams are très cliché, but it’s a useful construct to illustrate the fundamentally multi-faceted nature of the product manager role.

Know Your Market
As mentioned above, a product brief typically includes context on market positioning. In some cases a product may create an entirely new market segment, but, most of the time, it will compete against other, similar products within an existing segment. For example, as innovative as Apple’s iPhone was on its introduction in 2007, it was entering a pre-established smartphone segment within the larger mobile phone marketplace. Steve Jobs’ original iPhone keynote made it clear that he recognized this, as his argument for the superiority of iPhone was built atop a dissection of the shortcomings of the existing market leaders, with Jobs specifically name-checking products from Motorola, Blackberry, Palm and Nokia.

This is a screengrab from Steve Jobs’s introduction of iPhone at the MacWorld exposition in 2007. Jobs was a fan of the 2x2 segmentation matrix and used it to great effect here to illustrate—some might say exaggerate—the benefits of iPhone relative to its competition.

While a company’s sales and merchandising teams typically develop the deepest marketplace expertise, it’s essential for a product manager to understand the overarching dynamics of the segment that their product will occupy. For example, what are the leading brands and products in a given market segment, and why are those players succeeding? What are the opportunities within that segment—i.e. are there needs that aren’t being met, price points that aren’t being served? Are there key gatekeepers within the segment that stand between your product and your customer? A good brief will be informed by answers to questions like these because marketplace dynamics can play a huge role in the ultimate success or failure of a product.

Know Your End-User
Next, a product manager must develop a deep understanding of their target user. Why do they buy the type of product you intend to create? What job does it fulfill in their lives? Do they have functional or emotional needs that aren’t being met by existing products in the marketplace? This may all sound a bit fluffy, but small nuances in the motivations of your end-user can mean the difference between success and failure.

I can provide an example here from my own time as a product manager, or PLM, in Nike’s Running Footwear category. I was the PLM for what would eventually become the Nike LunarGlide+ and, in the early stages of that project, my team and I struggled to deliver on our shared brief for a no compromise running shoe targeting a new generation of runners.

The fundamental insight that enabled the success of the original Nike LunarGlide+ was the outgrowth of countless hours of engagement with our target runner. As an aside, I mention in the accompanying piece that the product manager’s primary deliverable is a brief, but that is by no means his or her only responsibility. For example, as the frames above depicting me in “talking head” mode illustrate, the product manager must serve as the evangelist-in-chief for their product, both inside their organization and out.

Our “Aha!” moment finally arrived after several months of on-the-ground research: We realized that, when our target runner told us she wanted a “simple” shoe, she actually meant she wanted a shoe that was “understandable.” We then had to dig into what “understandable” meant in the context of a running shoe, but this seemingly subtle distinction in the meaning behind a word completely changed our design direction and—I’m not exaggerating here—enabled us to progress from prototypes that runners hated in one round to samples they loved in the next.

We would not have reached this epiphany had we not spent an enormous amount of time engaging with our target user. As in the case of marketplace expertise being “owned” by sales and merchandising departments, some large companies will have consumer insights teams dedicated to the study of consumer needs and behaviors; but even in these instances, a product manager must develop a profound familiarity with their intended end-user within the context of the product they intend to create. In the case of the LunarGlide+, I had to understand the role running and running gear played in the life of our target runner, but I also had to know her well enough that I could appreciate the meaning behind her words. This connection was fundamental to the ultimate success of the product.

Know Your Brand
Finally, a product manager must maintain a deep understanding of the values underpinning their own brand. This probably sounds incredibly obvious, which may explain why so many product managers seem to forget it.

A good recent example is Amazon’s Fire Phone, which is widely recognized as having been a flop of epic proportions. Fast Company magazine was so interested in understanding why it failed that their February 2015 issue devotes 5,425 words to explaining what went wrong. They identify a number of factors, but it really boils down to this conclusion:

“Bezos, insiders say, was ‘the product manager’ on the Fire Phone [and] what makes the Fire Phone a particularly troubling adventure is that Amazon’s CEO seemingly lost track of the essential driver of his company’s brand. ‘We can’t compete head to head with Apple,’ says a high-level source at Lab126 [Amazon’s secretive R&D division]. ‘There’s a branding issue: Apple is premium, while our customers want a great product at a great price.’”

So, Jeff Bezos, a very smart man who is the CEO of Amazon and, according to many insider accounts, was the de facto product manager for the Fire Phone, failed to recognize that a successful product must embody the values of its brand. Goes to show you that this can happen to the best of ’em.

For counter examples, witness Apple’s refusal to offer a sub-$500 Netbook, which many industry “experts” insisted the company must do to remain competitive in the PC space back in the late-2000s (meanwhile, Apple just keeps setting Mac sales records, while the rest of the PC industry shrinks). Or their continued refusal to offer a cheap smartphone, again, against the entreaties of armchair pundits who exclaimed that Apple “would be stupid not to” release a low-cost phone (meanwhile, Apple just keeps setting smartphone sales records, while also growing market share).

Apple has refused these calls to go low-end because the company’s leaders know that to do so would be antithetical to the promise of their brand, which is founded on aspiration, innovation and a desire to surprise-and-delight. Tim Cook, the company’s CEO, made it very clear that he understands this in an interview with Bloomberg Businessweek:

“There’s always a large junk part of the market,” [Cook] says. “We’re not in the junk business ... There’s a segment of the market that really wants a product that does a lot for them, and I want to compete like crazy for those customers. I’m not going to lose sleep over that other market, because it’s just not who we are.”

Cook’s forthrightness is doubly impressive to me because this interview took place in September of 2013, at the height of the “Apple is doomed if they don't release a cheaper iPhone” mania. It reflects a deeply internalized understanding of the truth at the core of his brand—something every good product manager must develop and have the discipline to stick to.

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This post has ended up far, far longer than I had intended, but, for the two people who’ve actually made it this far down, I hope it’s helped you to better understand what a product manager does, and the areas of expertise that he or she must develop to be successful in the role. In a future post, I’ll answer the question I most often get from people who already know what a product manager is: How do I become a product manager?

In the meantime, I’ll leave you with a video of the best product manager of our generation brilliantly demonstrating all of the skills and domain expertise I’ve outlined above. Note how the presenter begins with an overview of his company’s target market (starts at the 1 minute mark), moves on to a discussion of user needs (starts at about the 8 minute mark) and then closes with a discusses of the attributes that set his product and brand apart from the competition (starts at about the 14 minute mark). This is going to sound terribly geeky, but I periodically re-watch this video to remind myself what it means to be a great product manager. Enjoy!

Agree? Disagree? Have questions? Let’s continue the conversation on Twitter @edotkim.

Rare Apple prototypes on display in PDX tonight!

As part of the ongoing Design Week Portland, Topaz Design is hosting an exhibit of rare, unreleased Apple prototypes. Here’s a brief description of the event...

Topaz Design invites you to attend the opening exhibit of the world’s largest collection of Apple prototypes, owned and curated by Portlander Jim Abeles. On display will be some of the rarest items, from industrial concepts to unreleased Apple products, working iOS devices, clear case portable Macintoshes and more.

And here are the details...

When: Tonight, October 9th from 6pm - 7pm
Where: Topaz Design, 1815 NW Overton Street, PDX
How Much: Free!

For more on the many other events and open houses going on this week, visit the Design Week Portland site. And, for more on Topaz Design, visit their site or follow them on Twitter @topazdesign.