Podcast: “Champagne Strategy,” Innovation, and Product Growth

Richard Mironov -

John James produces the “Champagne Strategy” podcast, which which deconstructs world-class business strategy with a focus on growth and tech.  We virtually shared a class of 19 Crimes Chardonnay during a rollicking chat about products, strategy, and tech history.

We touched on:

  • Elon Musk oversimplifying MBAs (Rich has one, but tries not to act like an MBA)
  • A bottle of bleach is a bottle of bleach, ketchup bottle design: thinking about innovation in Consumer Packaged Goods
  • We’ve been doing product-led growth since (at least) the 1980’s.  New insights or new label?
  • Fallacies about the originality of tech ideas and forgetting previous product attempts
  • “I see a lot of vision that’s labeled as strategy“
  • Rich is a huge fan of agile, but agile doesn’t answer product strategy questions.  We’re selling agile to the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
  • Why we shouldn’t outsource strategy
  • Rich would hate to work at a company that was completely staffed by product managers
  • When your sales team take you out for a drink it’s not (only) because they like you, it’s because they want something
  • Small companies can get away with things that large companies can’t.  And that’s why startups sometimes succeed where larger companies fail
  • About Daniel Elizalde’s upcoming book: “I think he’s one of the smartest guys on the planet”
  • Henry Ford fallacy: no, he never said that (and it’s mostly not true)