15 Must-Know Tips from Ellis and Brown's "Hacking Growth"

Monty Hammontree | December 7, 2018

Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success easily made my top 5 list of all-time favorite professional books.

The book is divided into two parts. The first, introduces growth hacking (aka lean engineering) processes, the roles you need to fill on your team, and cultural keys for success. The second, provides detailed tips and tricks for to how to effectively implement growth hacking across all phases of your customer funnel.

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Running Lean

Monty Hammontree | December 5, 2018

One of the most common Lean/Agile software development principles that I’ve seen paraphrased is to, “value conversation over documentation”. Ash proposes, early in the book, that the “true purpose” of a business plan lies in, “…facilitating conversations with people other than yourself.”

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What is the Opportunity Score?

JP Carrascal | November 27, 2018

The Opportunity Score is a tool that helps (among other things) to estimate market opportunity, to prioritize efforts in product development and to conduct competitive analysis. It is part of the Opportunity-Driven Innovation framework created by Anthony W. Ulwick, that aims at “making innovation predictable”. This article focuses specifically on the Opportunity Score calculation. Bear in mind it is not a silver bullet, and if you want to use properly, you should probably read a bit more on the Opportunity-Driven Innovation process to get the whole picture. To help with that, I have included a few links in the “Further Reading” section at the end of the article.

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This Human - a brief review.

JP Carrascal | November 1, 2018

This Human is a design book that is not about design but about the designer. The book shifts focus from business goals and design technique and puts the desiner—the human, the person—in the spotlight. It discusses several aspects of the designer’s role, reflecting upon the mindset, attitude and behaviors that lead to improving outcomes and that make the designer’s job easier and more pleasant.

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HaTS - Large-scale In-product Measurement of User Attitudes & Experiences with Happiness Tracking Surveys

Morgan Duffy | October 31, 2018

Since the introduction of the world wide web, businesses have not only increased in number, but also in size, profit, and customer accessibility. Online and computer products have become ubiquitous and pervasive all across the world. Companies use this interconnectivity to monitor usage and adoption of their services and products. They even attempt to use this data to predict future usage and adoption. In the last twenty years, a variety of different survey techniques have emerged attempting to gauge customer satisfaction, likelihood to recommend, and attitudes towards products.

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Making Ideas User-Friendly

Julie Stuart | October 29, 2018

This is a review of Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work.

Ever sat in a meeting and upon walking out the door, realized you retained none of what was said?

According to Roam, you were a victim of the Blah Blah Blahs.

The Blah Blah Blahs happen when we don’t think about the way we present our ideas to other people. Often we create overly complex, boring ways to describe ideas that are simple and insightful.

Roam’s book provides a guide on how to improve the way we communicate and present information to others. The main takeaway from the book is simple: complex is never better. Once we rid ourselves of long-winded, complicated descriptions, we can instead focus on how to make user-friendly ideas.

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