On My Shelf with Felipe Barbosa — Product Marketing Specialist at Vindi (São Paulo, Brazil)
About
I’m a Product Marketing Specialist at Vindi, a platform that helps companies to receive and manage payments. I’m passionate about understanding human behaviour and creating the best offer to help people accomplish their desired outcomes. I’m also co-founder of JTBD+, a Brazilian community to talk about Jobs To Be Done.
On my shelf
Positioning
The battle for your mind
by Al Ries & Jack Trout
My opinion
This book was first published in the ’80s and their ideas are still relevant to this day. The key takeaway is that brands, products and companies occupy a position in people’s mind where they’ll be perceived through their strengths, weaknesses and how they compare to the competition. Every product has a position in people’s mind. Understanding this helps product teams to make the best decision in order to achieve their vision and create better products.
224 pages, McGraw-Hill Education 2001
Thinking, Fast and Slow
by Daniel Kahneman
My opinion
Before reading this book I had already read other books in human behaviour and decision making that quoted Kahneman and Tversky work, but Thinking Fast and Slow allows readers to read right from the source. We all have two ways of thinking and what we do or choose is influenced by our biases. This book shows that we need to cultivate the ability to question things and be curious about things in order to try to get the best information possible when making decisions.
512 pages, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2011
Talking to Humans
Success Starts With Understanding Your Customers
by Giff Constable
My opinion
This is a short book with stories on how people used interviews to understand their customers or people that might be interested in what they are building. The main point is: get out of the building and talk to people. This is the best way to learn, and the book gives examples and explains how to conduct better interviews.
88 pages, Giff Constable 2014
Competing Against Luck
The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice
by Clayton Christensen
My opinion
Christensen work in Jobs To Be Done is well know and in this book he explains the theory, how to use it and what companies can achieve when understanding their customer behaviour through the Jobs To Be Done lenses. There are no frameworks and it’s not a step by step guide, but explains the concept in a way no other book did.
Clayton Christensen’s books on innovation are mandatory reading at Netflix.
— Reed Hastings, Co-founder and CEO of Netflix
288 pages, Harper Business 2016
User Story Mapping
Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product
by Jeff Patton
My opinion
I’ve read other books about techniques to build better products but this one is my favourite for one simple reason, it tackles the whole process of building better products and focusing on outcomes and not outputs. Before reading it I knew what User Story Mapping and user stories were, but I didn’t fully understand it and the logic behind creating this method.
324 pages, O’Reilly Media 2014
The PM Library series “On my shelf” features Product Leaders from all over the world who are passionate about reading and sharing with the community. If you want to join the movement and share your reading list with others send us a message or fill out the following form. Let’s get better together 📚.
