Rachel Wynn is a B2B SaaS product leader with over a decade of experience in product strategy. Rachel has a proven track record of bringing new products to market and managing complex enterprise products and has helped numerous clients think more strategically, de-risk decision-making, and find product-market fit faster. As an experienced product manager, she has worked at companies at various stages, from bootstrapped to venture capital-backed, private equity funded, and public. She has also experienced acquisition and IPO exits, served on a board of directors, served as a pitch judge for an innovation challenge, and founded companies. With a background in managing road mapping software at ProductPlan and product analytics software at Quantum Metric, Rachel has interviewed hundreds of product teams, making her an authority in product vision and strategy, product road mapping, 0-1 product thinking, interviewing customers, customer discovery and validation, product innovation, product launch and go-to-market planning, product analytics, stakeholder communication, pricing and packaging, research and discovery, and customer-centric products. In her spare time, Rachel is a bookworm and she’s always ready to recommend a great read.
Today, Rachel joins me to discuss how research-driven innovation can help teams create something new. She explains how research-driven innovation lessens your risk of failure and allows teams to make solid decisions. We discuss the importance of having a clear vision and why that vision needs to include all the problems you’re currently trying to solve. Rachel shares her approach to research in product management and how her background as a cognitive rehabilitation therapist informed her process. She emphasizes the importance of customer interviews, learning from your customers, and paying attention to what your competitors are doing. Rachel also outlines the research and feedback cycle and how to know when you’ve provided your customers with the most valuable solution.
“People will develop that book knowledge, yet—for all their best intentions—they're not getting different results. So there's this gap of taking that knowledge and bringing it into action.” - Rachel Wynn
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