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Mind the Product

Podcast

Why product managers are getting fired – Dave Wascha (CPTO and Advisor)

#mtpcon

The key principles of PLG: Leah Tharin at #mtpcon London 2025 (Product Advisor)

B2B product management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Machine Learning (ML)

Building Product Teams

Business Strategy

Data Driven Product Management

Digital Transformation

Diversity and Inclusion

Minimum Viable Product

OKRs

Prioritisation

Product Design

Product Research

Product Development Process

Product Ethics

Product Discovery

Product Leadership

Product Management Career

Product Strategy

Stakeholder Management

🌎 <a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/world-product-day/" style="color:#FFFFFF;text-decoration:underline;">Happy World Product Day!</a> Be sure to celebrate product, yourself, and your peers today! 🎉

Three unconventional ways to be a better product manager 

What product leaders can learn from mergers and acquisitions – Vincent Jong (CPO, Dealfront)

Inside Amex’s mobile app redesign – Jose Quesada at #mtpcon London 2025 (VP Product, Amex)

Breaking into product management: A practical guide for aspiring product professionals

The best resources for product managers in 2025

Louron serves as the Editor at Mind the Product, bringing nearly a decade of experience in editorial positions across business and technology publications. For any editorial inquiries, you can connect with him on LinkedIn or Twitter.

Louron Pratt

<p>Both new and experienced product managers often ask where this role came from and why it seems to have so much crossover with other roles such as Marketing and UX. While there’s no definitive history of product management, it’s often useful to consider our roots and understand how the role evolved over time. In this Sunday Rewind post, we look back to when Martin Eriksson provided a bit of background into the history and evolution of product management.</p>
<h2>The history</h2>
<p>Martin explains how modern product management started in 1931 with a memo written by Neil H. McElroy at Procter &amp; Gamble. It started as a justification to hire more people (sound familiar to any product managers out there?) but became a cornerstone in modern thinking about brand management and ultimately product management.</p>
<figure style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/4296136d-3ac3-4221-a84a-7f1229fa404d_neil-mcelroy.jpeg" alt="" width="600" height="399" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Neil McElroy</figcaption></figure>
<p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/tag/sunday-rewind/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Access further insights from the archives by delving into our Sunday Rewind series.</a></span></p>
<h2>Product management and tech combine</h2>
<p>As the role moved into the tech world, however, this separation from the development and production of the product was untenable. Most of the newfangled companies in the tech world was inventing whole new industries and they couldn’t just rely on packaging and pricing of a commodity to succeed. This brought Product Development back to the centre of the Product Management role, as it was imperative not just to understand the customer and their needs, but to align the product’s development with them.</p>
<p>This schism between Marketing and Product Management can still be felt in many organisations today Martin explains. Both departments feel they “own” the customer and understanding the marketplace. In most tech organisations, however, Marketing has evolved to be more about owning the brand and customer acquisition, while Product owns the value proposition and the development of the product, Martin believes.</p>
<h2>Product management takes a seat at the big table</h2>
<p>After discussing how product management joined the tech space and became agile, Martin explains how it further made its transition to collaborating with both marketing and engineering.</p>
<p>He says: “These days Product Management is increasingly a stand-alone function with a seat at the management table and reporting directly to the CEO. This is critical because it aligns the product team directly with the business vision and goals, makes them internal as well as external evangelists of that vision and gives them the independence necessary to make tough prioritisation calls.”</p>
<h2>What’s next for product management?</h2>
<p>Good product management is becoming a sustainable competitive advantage, and is continuing to evolve, Martin says. “It’s something that is become more widely understood and owned within organisations. It’s becoming a discipline in which you may be an engineer, a designer, a founder or a product manager – but all that matters is that you are at the core of the product and passionately work towards the betterment of that product in service of your customers.”</p>
<p>Read <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.mindtheproduct.com/history-evolution-product-management/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The history and evolution of product management in full</a></span> to dive deeper into where product management has been and where it’s heading next.</p>

core/freeform

The magic of making great products with Christian Idiodi

Continuous discovery by Konstantin Diener

Unusual business in the product discovery stage by Kristian Collin Berge

How to find out what your customers want by Janet Bumpas

From PO to CPO: How to drive your product career by Namrata Sarmah

How to recognise and beat the ‘knowing’ gap – Christina Wodtke at MTP Engage Hamburg

Get innovation-ready, your product manager is on fire! by Julia Shalet

Jedi discovery and delivery by Lisa Mo Wagner

From pandemic to pingdemic – Building through uncertainty

A designer, a product manager, and an engineer walk into a bar…by Karishma Irani

SUNDAY REWIND: The history and evolution of product management

Louron Pratt

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