Anuradha Sridharan

Marty Cagan in his book " Inspired: How to create products Customers love " talks about the characteristics of inspiring and successful products. Apart from the popular ones such as usability and visual appeal, one specific characteristic that struck me is the importance he has given towards human emotions and the role they play in creating a winning product. Being a key enthusiast of marketing strategies driven based on consumer behavioral aspects, it felt like a "aha!" moment while I was reading the chapters on the role of emotion in products. Marty says, "People buy and use products largely for emotional reasons". It could be a positive emotion that is triggered by the product or a negative emotion that has been wiped off by the product. For example, Facebook users might feel friendship, love and pride by being part of their social community and being in touch with their friends Anyone who had to make an urgent phone call might have felt irritated...

I was going over the recently published HubSpot's culture deck a few days ago and was mighty impressed and inspired by it. Many points resonated with my thinking in terms of building and maintaining organization culture. I always believed that vision/mission/values statements shouldn't just be something that a firm creates for the sake of it, with some jazzy words and jargon laden phrases, stuck on the walls of every conference room in the office premises. It has to mean something and represent in everything the firm does. I highly recommend you to go over this deck. Some of the points which I noted down for my future reference: "Solve for the customer, not just their happiness but also their success" This statement is relevant not just for organization culture but also while envisioning a new product. Understanding customer's problems and creating a solution through your product is just not enough. We should take a step forward in empathizi...