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.