Six Product Management Thought Leaders Worth Following

Marty Cagan

No list of Product Management thought leaders would be complete without Marty Cagan. He’s been called “the most influential person in the product space,” and for good reason. He’s worked with industry giants like AOL, eBay, Netscape, and Hewlitt-Packard. And he co-founded the Silicon Valley Product Group, which offers a variety of resources and workshops on building great products.

Marty is the author of the best-selling book Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love. His upcoming book, co-authored with SVPG teammate Chris Jones, is called Empowered: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products. As the title suggests, it’s about empowering product teams to do their best work — “achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people.”

You can follow Marty on Twitter and read his Insights blog.

Dan Olsen

Dan Olsen wrote the playbook on the lean product process. Literally — he’s the author of The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate With Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback. It’s a how-to guide on developing a product strategy, designing and testing prototypes, and ultimately launching a successful product.

Dan is also the host of Lean Product Meetup, a group for product people who share and discuss best practices. The group is based in Silicon Valley, but offers monthly webinars and online workshops on Lean Startup, product design, user experience, and Agile development.

You can follow Dan on Twitter and at dan-olsen.com.

Julie Zhuo

Julie Zhuo was thrust into Product Management at the tender age of 25. But she figured it out quickly — later becoming a product design VP at Facebook. She wrote The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Else Looks to You, a book based on her own successes and failures. It offers practical advice on leading with confidence and empowering people to do their best work.

Julie is a prolific writer. She has written about technology and leadership for highly respected publications like The New York Times and Fast Company. Her popular blog, The Looking Glass, is “about the work of building products, teams, and ourselves.”

Julie partnered with Chandra Narayanan, Chief Data Scientist at Sequoia Capital, to create Inspirit. Inspirit is an advisory firm that works with tech companies on the challenges of building and scaling successful products.

You can follow Julie on Twitter. She blogs on Medium and Substack.

John Cutler

John Cutler is another well-known and highly respected voice in the product community. A former touring musician, John came to product development almost by accident. He noticed how different systems of communication and operations affected his ability to engage and focus on his work. He became interested in organizational design and alignment to build better products.

John advocates impact-focused product development. In his words, “Tools and data chops are part of the puzzle. But being impact-focused also takes much more: curiosity, great questions, psychological safety, the right structure, autonomy, alignment, and access to customers (among other things).”

John is a product evangelist for Amplitude. He’s active on Twitter, and is releasing a book based on his Twitter musings on September 1. Follow him on Medium and Substack, or check out his blog at cutle.fish.

Nir Eyal

Nir Eyal is the author of the best-selling book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products. Hooked explores how products influence behavior. He outlines a four-step process — The Hook Model — for creating products people want to use. And his Hooked Online Workshop will “help you build habit-forming products and services that improve the lives of your customers through subtle, healthy behavioral changes.”

His latest book, Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, tackles the subjects of distraction, focus, and productivity. Indistractable seeks to answer the question, “How do we get the best from technology without letting it get the best of us?”

Could you improve your personal habits and time management? Are you interested in the psychology of user behavior? Then be sure to follow Nir Eyal on Twitter and check out his blog on nirandfar.com.

Roman Pichler

Roman Pichler is a well-known author and Product Management expert. His newest book is How to Lead in Product Management: Practices to Align Stakeholders, Guide Development Teams, and Create Value Together.

In the past, Roman worked for Intel and Siemens AG. Now, he teaches and advises on product strategy and Agile practices, and is the founder of Pichler Consulting.

Roman offers a variety of resources and tools on his website. You’ll find helpful templates for vision boards, product roadmaps, management frameworks, decision charts, and more. He also hosts a product management podcast.

You can follow Roman on Twitter and Medium.

BONUS: Mind The Product

Mind the Product is not an individual thought leader. It’s the world’s largest community of product people, boasting more than 150,000 members in over 175 cities.

Since 2010, Mind the Product has offered meetups, conferences, and online resources, including a large public Slack community and a new tiered membership program. It’s a great way to connect with product leaders and innovators around the world.

You can follow Mind the Product on Twitter. Check out their ProductTank meetups, and read the blog at mindtheproduct.com.