INSPIRED in the Generative AI Era

Marty’s Note: 

The book INSPIRED is available in hardcover, digital, and audio versions, but until now, the audio version was only available in an exclusive arrangement with Amazon, on audible.com.  The audio versions of our other books have been available from all major audio book providers.  The exclusive contract with Amazon has now expired, and my publisher asked me to re-record the book so they could re-release it on all channels, and this new recording is now available.  The publisher asked me to write and record a new preface to this second audio book edition of INSPIRED, and I’m including the written form of that preface below.

INSPIRED has exceeded even my wildest expectations.  

The first edition was published in 2007, and the second edition ten years later, in 2017.  All told, the book has sold over half a million copies globally, in print, digital and audio versions, and has been published in more than a dozen languages.

Best of all, wherever I travel in the world, I meet so many people that tell me that this book was their key to unlocking a career they love.

The book seems to have stood the test of time.  I attribute that to the choice to focus on the underlying principles rather than the current framework or process of the day.

That said, so much has changed in the world, even in the years since the second edition of this book was published.

First there was the global pandemic, which of course posed an existential threat to so many companies.  Then there was the innovation of generative AI, which poses an unprecedented opportunity.

Yet these threats and opportunities are precisely why companies are attracted to the model of product development described in this book.  And indeed, the world witnessed the success of companies that rose to the challenges presented by the pandemic, and we’re already seeing the results from those companies that have embraced the new enabling technology that is generative AI.

Today we refer to the way of working described in INSPIRED as the product operating model (“product model” for short).  And many people today are familiar with the differences between delivery teams, feature teams, and the empowered product teams described in INSPIRED.

The SVPG Series of Books

In the years since the second edition of INSPIRED was published, my SVPG Partners and I have published three additional books, each of which were designed to expand on sections of INSPIRED.

In 2020, we wrote EMPOWERED: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Products to elaborate on the “Product @ Scale” section of INSPIRED.

In 2022, Martina Lauchengco published LOVED: How to Rethink Marketing for Tech Products to elaborate on the go-to-market side of the critical concept of product/market fit.

And in 2024, we published TRANSFORMED: Moving To The Product Operating Model, to elaborate on the “Transformation Techniques” section.  In addition to sharing proven techniques to help with transformation, that book shares several case studies of companies from far beyond Silicon Valley that successfully transformed, and then used those skills to innovate on behalf of their customers.

INSPIRED will still give you a good taste of these topics, but know that if you need more depth, the other books are there for you.

In terms of this book’s content, there are two aspects that have changed substantially since the publication of the second edition:

Remote Work and Product Teams

The first aspect is the prevalence of remote work.

It’s no secret that INSPIRED encourages co-located teams wherever possible.  Then the pandemic happened, and co-located teams were no longer an option for many companies.  Moreover, even before the pandemic, many companies were struggling to find enough available talent locally.

Today, and I believe this will be the case post-pandemic indefinitely, many organizations have no choice but to embrace remote employees.  And the benefits of accessing talent from all over the globe is, in general, a good trade-off.

But that doesn’t make the challenges of product discovery with remote team members any easier.

The good news is that as an industry we have learned a great deal about what works well remotely and what doesn’t, how to leverage the advantages, and how to mitigate the additional challenges.

The main thing to understand is that the whole topic of remote workers depends on the specific role.  Unfortunately, for most of the popular press and online discussions, people do not distinguish when they argue for their point of view.  But remote work affects sales representatives, customer success agents, CEO’s, engineers, product managers and product designers very differently.

For many, if not most, roles, remote workers can be at least as effective as those that are co-located.  But if you want to know why so many leading product model companies are pushing for a return to the office, it’s because product discovery, or innovation more generally, is where most teams continue to struggle with remote work. 

There is an important form of healthy friction that is needed for effective collaboration, and this impacts product managers, product designers, and engineering tech leads more than most others.

This is not to say that you can’t succeed when some or all of these people are working remotely, but you’ll need to work harder to overcome the additional challenges. 

The Impact of Generative AI

The second aspect that has changed is the introduction of generative AI.

Generative AI has two very different dimensions that each impact product teams:  

The first dimension is that product teams all over the world are asking themselves how this new enabling technology might help better solve problems for their customers?  This is precisely what the product model and empowered product teams are designed to be good at.  That said, AI-powered products often have especially substantial risks, so this raises the demands on product teams, especially product managers.

The second dimension looks at how generative AI powered tools and services can help product teams discover and deliver products better and faster.  This new generation of tools is already improving the productivity of each of the members of the cross-functional product team, albeit in different ways for different roles.  And we’re already starting to see some of the second-order effects.  

In general, anything that reduces the time and cost to test out product ideas helps us in product discovery, and anything that reduces the time and cost to deliver products to our customers helps us in product delivery.

While the coming years promise to bring continued change, people and companies with the skills to rapidly learn and apply new technologies to solve real customer problems are likely to be highly valued well into the foreseeable future.

The principles and techniques described in this book will hopefully help you to learn and then thrive as a member of an empowered product team working in the product model.

You can listen to the new audio edition of INSPIRED on all major audiobook apps.