The Essential Books That Inspire Me as a Product Manager

As a product manager, I have to deal with a lot of challenges and opportunities every day. I have to design products that solve real problems, that are easy to use, and that delight the customers. I have to manage teams, projects, and make sure that everything is aligned and on track. I have to keep learning and improving, and stay ahead of the competition.

One of the ways that I do that is by reading books. Books are a great source of inspiration, knowledge, and wisdom. They help me to broaden my perspective, to learn from the experts, and to discover new ideas. They are not necessarily about product management, but they are relevant and useful for anyone who wants to create great products and services.

Here are some of the books that inspire me as a product manager:

• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman. This is a classic book that explains the principles of good design and how to apply them to everyday objects and situations. It teaches how to design products that are intuitive, usable, and enjoyable, and how to avoid common design mistakes.
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. This is a book that introduces the lean startup methodology, which is a way of creating and testing products in a fast and efficient way, using feedback from customers and data from experiments. It teaches how to validate assumptions, how to build a minimum viable product, how to measure progress, and how to pivot or persevere.
• The Innovators by Walter Isaacson. This is a book that tells the history of the digital revolution, from the invention of the computer and the internet, to the emergence of artificial intelligence and biotechnology. It profiles the people who made it happen, their personalities, their collaborations, and their conflicts.
• The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli. This is a book that exposes the cognitive biases and logical fallacies that affect our thinking and decision making. It explains how we often fall prey to errors of reasoning, such as confirmation bias, hindsight bias, sunk cost fallacy, and many others.
• The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen. This is a book that analyzes the phenomenon of disruptive innovation, which is when a new product or service creates a new market and displaces the existing one.

These are some of the books that inspire me as a product manager. I hope that you find them interesting and helpful, and that they spark your curiosity and creativity. If you have any other books that you would like to recommend, please feel free to share them in the comments section. I would love to hear from you and learn from your suggestions.