Amazon, Netflix, Ebay... Marty Cagan has deep inside knowledge of how leading tech-powered organisations operate. In this second edition of Inspired, Cagan shares all of that knowledge to show us how we can build innovative product organisations like the very best.

The renewed focus of this second edition is product innovation at scale - how to build an innovative product culture in large enterprise organisations. Quite possibly the biggest challenge facing every tech company, certainly in my experience.

Surely an impossible topic to cover faithfully in a single book? There are so many aspects of creating great products, and an infinite number of obstacles. But somehow Cagan has done it. This book is special.

Product Discovery is the Differentiator

Inspired is split into five broad sections, covering the major areas of building innovative product companies: people, process, product, and culture. Across all of them, however, is one vital theme that Cagan believes is a major differentiator: continuous discovery.

The best innovative product cultures Cagan has witnessed all had a strong discovery culture. Continuously talking to customers and testing ideas out with them before they are built. 

Alongside that belief, another strong opinion repeated consistently throughout the book is that the whole team should be involved in discovery - the whole team should be part of user research and the whole team should have the autonomy to suggest new features and decide what they should work on.

I could not agree more with these opinions. I have been part of strong discovery teams and it has completely transformed my mindset as an engineer. In saying that, the examples and techniques Cagan talks about in the book have taught me I still have lots more to learn about discovery.

In particular, the section on discovery techniques was a real eye opener covering value testing, usability testing, feasibility testing, and business viability testing. The chapters discussing team structure were also very enlightening.

Broad Product Culture Coverage 

When you write a book, you have to make trade-offs about how much detail to include in order to keep the page count low and avoid writing a textbook that nobody reads. Clearly with this book Cagan has gone for broad coverage of many topics, lacking a lot of depth.

It would be unreasonable to expect all of the topics to be covered in full depth. The book would be over a thousand pages. However, there are very few examples of the techniques talked about in the book. Cagan talks about a lot of prototypes for example, but doesn't show any. He talks about startup canvases and story maps, but doesn't show any.

This means there are two things you have to acknowledge as a reader. Firstly, you have to take a leap of faith and trust Cagan on some of his opinions and ideas. And secondly, you have to read more books to go in detail on specific topics.

It didn't take much of a leap of faith for me, though. I was consistently able to verify a lot of Cagan's opinions and experiences with my own and other books. So I feel confident to treat all of his opinions with high credibility. In my opinion, you should, too.

The Final Word

Many organisations I've with and heard about are weak at product discovery and empowering their teams to make product decisions. It's no coincidence they were poor innovators.

Cagan shows us another way in Inspired and we should all be making efforts to drive as many of these ideas in our organisations as possible.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone working in tech organisations, especially senior management.