Product Thinking Blueprint

— The vision document

Why Product Thinking? Our Vision

We believe that India will become a globally competitive product nation through creative product thinking and problem solving, and our mission is to:

“Support and nurture great product thinkers and build artistpreneurs* in every startup corner of the country.”

*Artistpreneurs bring a rare combination of entrepreneurial + artistic thinking to solve hard problems and in the process create sustainable value for everyone.

How will we make this happen? Our Mission

We began this journey with collating many observations, perspectives, opinions into our first blog post “Do we have the DNA to build great products?”. We believe great products are made at the intersection of Intuition, Boundaries, Simplicity, Focus and Customer Centricity, 5 tenets key to a product thinking mindset. Our mission is to initiate and support programs / activities to help our rising product thinkers in India master these key tenets.

What activities will we undertake? Our Program

Our intervention programs will focus on activities covering the intersections of the target product thinkers & artistpreneurs community, the mentor network we mobilize, and the insights and knowledge corpus we build.

Our Values (Do’s & Don’ts)

A blueprint list to help us stay focused on the core needs of the Product Thinking initiative.

Do’s & Don’ts (applies to volunteers, members, mentors, partners)

1. Spread energy and passion. Encourage and motivate.
2. Stay firmly on the core focus areas. Do not venture into areas / discussions not part or related to our initiative.
3. Listen to feedback and opinions with respect.
4. Give feedback using the sandwich method — constructive criticism between two positive feedbacks.
5. Keep focus and scope within bounds of feasibility. Do not over-extend.
6. All activities are not for profit. Do not recommend any for profit suggestions (self or for others).

Our Members

Our program primarily focuses on supporting early-mid stage startups, people ranging from founders, product managers, product designers, engineers…

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Our product thinkers come in many shapes, sizes and functions :-). But they all have passion, commitment and focus to create a viable product value story, and commit to weekly / monthly time to work on areas in this topic.

Founders / CXOs of startups that are yet to reach product-market fit or have validated a product-market fit but have not achieved the growth stage.

• The startup is between 1 to 5 years old.
• The revenue < 10Cr ARR.
• The startup has 10–100 employees.
• The product has < 1M users (B2C).
• The product has < 20 customers (B2B).
• The startup has sufficient runway (VC / Bootstrap / Angel).

Product Managers in early-mid stage growth startups with a PM team size of < 10.

• The PM has independent ownership & directive to discover opportunities and translate into viable product / features.
• The PM is the glue for inputs & requests from different stakeholders in the company.
• The PM is not working as a messenger or on plain translation of business requirements.

Product Designers (primarily UX lead) in early-mid stage startups with a design team size of < 4.

• The designer has firm charter & freedom to research & build great user experience.
• The designer has an art / design degree education post high school.

Engineering Leads / Managers in early-mid stage startups with a development team size of < 50 devs.

• Engineer has been part of the product journey from the early conceptualization, validation to sustainable development.
• Engineer is helping craft a new technology or working on embedding cutting edge technology to solve product problems.

Application Process

We will invite applications to be part of this member community of product thinkers.

Our Volunteer & Mentor Network

It takes a village to raise a product thinker / artistpreneur. Since anyone who joins us will be doing voluntary work, we are looking for people who are passionate about product creation, are highly motivated to help the community, and can dedicate time to lead hands-on with various activities of the program. We are also building a mentor network of experts who can help coach & guide our members on various topics of product thinking & creation.

Our Programs

Our intervention will be at many levels including but not limited to:

1. Develop a vibrant member community of product thinkers from early-mid stage founders, product managers, designers, engineers & investors.
2. Organize events and offsites bringing our member product creators & practitioners in touch with reputed global product leaders, with an aim to generate thought-provoking discussions & take-aways on various topics on creating impactful products.
3. Develop a mentor network of founders & product-leaders to help with targeted coaching, mentoring, and co-creating workshops for members of the early-mid stage founders, product managers, designers or engineers,
4. Produce a corpus of knowledge to help member product thinkers learn from practical insights of global leaders, as well as other member experiences of successes, failures, and observations. Organize regular debates, roundtables, and speaking sessions on gathering & sharing such knowledge