Nils Davis, Principal, NPD Associates

I think I was born to be a product manager. I like to have my fingers in everything, and I love working with people and teams to help them achieve great things. I started in high tech as a technical writer. Some of my colleagues suggested product management would be a better use of my talents for persuasion and communication, combined with technical credibility.

I started doing enterprise software product management in that long ago time when there were no classes or books on PM. I always wished I had the “secret” handbook about product management to help me get over the humps. Instead, I was lucky to work with excellent mentors across my career, who taught me about finding marketing problems, driving the creation of solutions, and taking the solutions to market effectively.

Product managers are ultimately responsible for delivering products that create value in the world. My ultimate goal is to help us all create more value by ensuring every product is a solution to a meaningful market problem. And that every team creating and selling products is as effective as they can be. In my new book, The Secret Product Management Handbook, I’ve shared a lot of what I learned on how best to achieve this.