Driving 0 to 1 Product Initiatives

Cohort-based Course

Maximize the odds of success for big new product initiatives by improving customer discovery, experimentation, and stakeholder management.

Course overview

Going from zero to one is daunting...

Creating a new product or big new feature inside a company comes with an entirely different level of difficulty compared to optimizations. The good news is that there are battle-tested techniques to increase the odds that you will be successful.


We all know the failure points:

1. We get caught up in our vision and don't tune closely into what the customer and market really need

2. We fail to navigate the politics of innovation and funding inside our companies

3. We fail to ruthlessly test critical assumptions about our entire business model, and thus turn small failures into big ones


This class is designed to show you methods for overcoming these failure points. Because this is better learned in a hands-on way, you will practice on your real work. And while it's a 5-week class, you should walk away with immediately-applicable takeaways each week.


The methods we'll cover are grounded in years of practical experience. I've seen them work as a Chief Product Officer overseeing a 150-person product team, and as a consultant working directly with companies like Mayo Clinic, Steelcase, Time Inc, and Hearst to improve how they innovate. My books on these topics are faved by the likes of Eric Ries and Steve Blank and used in companies, accelerators, and universities around the world.


You will bring your own project into the class, done in a way that protects your confidentiality. You will run it through a rigorous gauntlet of activities over several weeks that should hone:


  * How to ensure strategic alignment and financial impact 

  * How to do effective customer research and discovery

  * How to design, test, implement, and utilize experiments

 * How to set up an ongoing cadence of effective decision making and risk management

 * How to can navigate stakeholders and the politics of innovation


Tuesday classes will be a mixture of sharing examples and tips, as well as hands-on practice time. Each week, there is also an optional roundtable session to ask questions, get feedback on your work, and learn from each other.


WHAT WE WILL COVER

Pre-class: decide on the idea you are bringing into the class and also decide if you can work in “public” or if your idea needs to be mostly confidential (see Statement of Confidentiality below). The class has been designed for either to work.


Class 1: Workshop our risks, impact, and alignment. Activities: assumptions and risk mapping, strategy mapping, value/impact statement (including financial impact). 

 Take-home assignment: create a mini-model on the financial impact of your idea.


Class 2: Customer discovery/research. Activities: demo best practices, discuss recruitment methods and challenges, create research plan and interview guide. 

  Take-home assignment: at least 1 customer interview or observation.


Class 3: Risk refinement and decision-making. Activities: practice research synthesis, create a risks dashboard, make continue/kill/pivot decision

  Take-home assignment: at least 1 customer interview -or- 1 colleague interview, update risks dashboard.


Class 4: Pre-Product Experiments. Activities: discuss examples of pre-product experiments (as opposed to A/B testing), brainstorm exercise, completion of experiment template for your top idea.

  Take-home assignment: at least 1 customer interview -or- mini-experiment, update risks dashboard.


Class 5: Innovation politics. Activities: discussion of stakeholder management, pre-mortem exercise, risk assessment and mitigation plan, and analysis of next steps.


Statement of Confidentiality: Because I want students bringing real ideas into the class in order to make meaningful progress on real work, I understand that some of these ideas might be confidential in nature. Students will have the ability to tell me in writing if the idea is confidential in nature. Students will then have the choice of working either in private or in a way viewable by the cohort. I, Giff Constable, commit to preserving the confidentiality of all student ideas marked in writing as confidential. The details of ideas marked as confidential, as well as the artifacts created during the class, will not be disclosed to other students nor anyone outside of the class except by the student’s own volition. In other words, I will keep my mouth completely shut and you can decide how much you want to share.


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NOTE: When you enroll in this course, you’ll receive $1,395 in free credits to level up your workflow with Superhuman, Linear, Sprig, Dovetail & Gamma (see FAQ for details)

Who is this course for

01

You are in charge of a big new product feature and want to knock it out of the park.

02

You are trying to create an entirely new product or business line within your company.

03

You are a product leader wanting to teach your people how to de-risk downside and maximize upside on new initiatives.

What you’ll get out of this course

Immediately impact your real work

Students are asked to bring their actual work into the class (or something they are hoping to work on), so all of our activities should feel directly actionable.

Learn best practices on discovery and research methods

We'll cover and practice how to do effective customer discovery (UX research) in a very practical way that can lead to huge insights.

Design meaningful experiments

You'll pick up examples of how to run experiments before big investments in engineering work, and design your own.

Improve how you navigate the politics of innovation

We'll be talking about when and how our methods, frameworks, and artifacts can be used to improve alignment and manage politics.

This course includes

10 interactive live sessions

Lifetime access to course materials

In-depth lessons

Direct access to instructor

4 projects to apply learnings

Guided feedback & reflection

Private community of peers

Course certificate upon completion

Maven Satisfaction Guarantee

This course is backed by Maven’s guarantee. You can receive a full refund within 14 days after the course ends, provided you meet the completion criteria in our refund policy.

Course syllabus

Week 1

Nov 19—Nov 24

    Nov

    19

    Workshop risks, impact, and alignment

    Tue 11/195:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)

    Nov

    22

    Roundtable #1

    Fri 11/225:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Assignment

    1 item

Week 2

Nov 25—Dec 1

    Nov

    26

    Workshop customer discovery methods

    Tue 11/265:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)

    Nov

    29

    Roundtable #2

    Fri 11/295:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Assignment

    1 item

Week 3

Dec 2—Dec 8

    Dec

    3

    Workshop risks and a decision-making framework

    Tue 12/35:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)

    Dec

    6

    Roundtable #3

    Fri 12/65:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Assignment

    1 item

Week 4

Dec 9—Dec 15

    Dec

    10

    Workshop pre-product experiments

    Tue 12/105:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)

    Dec

    13

    Roundtable #4

    Fri 12/135:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

    Assignment

    1 item

Week 5

Dec 16—Dec 20

    Dec

    17

    Workshop stakeholder management

    Tue 12/175:00 PM—6:30 PM (UTC)

    Dec

    20

    Roundtable #5

    Fri 12/205:00 PM—6:00 PM (UTC)
    Optional

Meet your instructor

Giff Constable

Giff Constable

Giff Constable is the author of Talking to Humans and Testing with Humans, two books on customer discovery (research) and experiments that are used around the world in universities and accelerator programs. He was the CEO of Neo Innovation (acq by Pivotal) and put these ideas into practice helping companies like Mayo Clinic, American Express, Hearst, and Time Inc, improve their innovation efforts. He also put these ideas into practice as the CPO of Meetup and VP of Product at Axial, pressure-testing these methods for new features of products working at scale. 

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Course schedule

4-6 hours per week

  • Tuesdays

    12pm - 1:30pm US Eastern

    Class time for sharing best practices and workshopping methods.

  • Fridays

    12pm - 1pm US Eastern

    Optional roundtable to ask questions, get feedback on your work, and learn from each other.

Frequently Asked Questions

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Driving 0 to 1 Product Initiatives