Buddha and the Product Manager

If Robert Frost defined literature as "words that have become deeds" then product management is " words that have become products."

Proctor and Gamble created the position of product manager in the 1940's. The PM run the business of a product or brand. There was not high technology at stake. On the surface just staples, like soap and shampoos

My own definition of a Product Manager is for 2005. A PM has the ability to take engineering ideas and make them pay off. S/he treats engineering talent as an equity which needs constantly to increase its valuation.

A entrepreneurial Product Manager creates tangibles (investors, revenues, partners) out of words, ideas, and intentions that come both from engineering and from customers.

Ideally, he has to have , like the great original Budha, Siddhartha Gautama,

... a cool head and warm heart, a blend that shielded him from sentimentality, on one hand, and indiference, on the other.... Every problem that came his way was automatically subjected to cool, dispassionate analysis...yet this critical logical component was balanced by a strong component of tenderness and compassion.

(Smith and Novak, Budhism, HarperSanFrancisco)

This chemistry makes the greatest products ever. Business 101 books recommend never to negotiate with a lower authority not empowered to make concessions. Buddha did talk to the supreme Spirituality in the Nature.

Miha