How to validate your product features - Jason Sparks

What is really missing is validating that assumption and taking the risk of being proven wrong before you build anything. Finding product market fit is tricky enough when you're in a startup, but what about when you're inside a big enterprise? They come up with an idea and a solution and then they build that solution and then they ship it and then they see it like, oh crap, that failed. You don't want to waste. millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of time for something that may not even work. Hey, it's the product experience and I'm Lily Smith. And I'm Randy Silver. This week's guest is Jason Sparks, Principal Product Manager at Re-Up Education. Jason's helping millions of adult learners get back to college and he's got strong views on how to validate ideas. We talked about what happens when leadership falls in love with the wrong idea, why validation should never be a one-time exercise. and how being proven wrong might just be the best outcome of all. We should be out there learning, working with our teams to get out there and really build strong relationships. Jason, thank you so much for joining us tonight. How are you doing? I am fantastic, Randy. It's so great to be here. Thank you for the opportunity to be here today. Well, thanks for joining us. And we had a chance to chat a couple weeks back about tonight's topic about product market fit and how to find it in enterprise. But before we dig into that too much, can we just do a quick introduction? What are you up to these days, Jason? And how did you get into product in the first place? Oh, boy. Well, so right now, I'm the principal product manager for a company called Re-Up Education. And Re-Up is an industry leader that supports adult learners who stopped out of college, those who have some college but no degree or credential, and helps them return to college to complete their degree. Re-Up pairs data-driven insights with personal coaching to help re-engage these learners at scale. So think thousands of learners across multiple institutions within the higher ed space in the United States. We combine technology and human support to remove the barriers that adult learners face and help them re-engage with college. Myself, I'm actually also a college dropout, and so the mission that REUP serves is really near and dear to my heart. There are over 40 million Americans who have some college, but no degree. And when I became disillusioned at a younger age and I stopped out of college, and let life interfere and engage in a bunch of hurdles and other challenging opportunities in life, I stopped out of college for two years and went back, worked, and then ultimately decided to go back to college. And then in a blink of an eye, not only did I have an associate's degree, but my bachelor's degree, and then two years later, I have my master's. And so... The work I do at REUP to help re-engage stopout learners is really important to me. And right now I'm focusing on data visualization and helping our higher ed partners understand the value of the work that we're doing. But that's now, man. When I think about my career, I often think about what my memoir would be titled, and I think it's The Many Lies of Jason Sparks. I've worn so many hats over the years. I started my career as a farm tech. here in Texas and eventually started teaching at a community college in the farm tech space and became a department chair. And from there, my higher ed career bloomed and grew. So after becoming a division chair, I found myself teaching as a lecturer and undergraduate advisor at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Well, actually... met the director of support for Blackboard socially when I was living in DC. And after a few months of hanging out with him, with John, he mentioned that they were actually hiring for a product manager for their institutional assessment and accreditation tool called Blackboard Outcomes. This is with Blackboard. And so I took a risk and I applied. And my family has always been big in technology. And so I wanted to sort of marry my experience in higher ed with higher ed in education technology and applied for the role of Blackboard. And sure enough, the rest is history. Here I am almost 14 years later, having held a variety of roles and with some of the biggest names in education technology, Blackboard, Illumin, Instructure, Learning Objects. and now with Re-Up Education, you know, the whole idea of happenstance and influence from those you meet in the world around you is how I got into product. Jason, that's great. I'm going to do one piece of translation or education for people in the UK. When Jason says college, he doesn't mean what we talk about as college here as sixth form in the last two years of secondary school. or pre-university. College and university are the same thing in the States. University is usually if they've got a law school or a med school or an MBA program or something like that. It's, yeah, two lands divided by the same language sometimes. Yeah, indeed. Yeah. Post-secondary education, university education. Okay. But let's get on to the topic at hand. You did a talk recently about the problems that a lot of companies have, a lot of enterprises have with finding product markets fit for new things, for things that they're developing. And I've been on the inside of this a lot. You know, you've got a lot of thinking inside the building. You've got a lot of numbers. You potentially even have some market research. There's something missing from that, isn't there? What's the thing that's missing? What's the problem? Oh, validation of an idea. Just because an idea exists doesn't mean it's meant to be solved. There are so many products out there that have been built and developed that are in search of the market rather than meeting a need and solving a problem. So I think that what is really missing is when you take an idea and you build a product against that idea that when it hasn't been validated, you're not actually solving a pain that exists. You're solving for something that you think that exists. It's just an assumption. And what have you seen specifically in your kind of experiences? Like you mentioned people are not validating ideas properly, but how has this played out? And obviously you don't need to call out specific organizations that you've worked for, but just across the many years that you've been working in learning and development and in enterprises. Oh, sure. I mean, like founders and product managers and leaders. often identify an opportunity. They've read an article, they've been talking to some colleagues, they've been, they went to a conference and heard of an idea. They've conducted a little research, they've formed an assumption, and then based upon that assumption, they take that inside and they come up with an idea and a solution. And then they build that solution, and then they ship it, and then they see it like, oh crap, that failed. Well, I think that's... That's the problem is that we're not being proactive when it comes to product research and building and validating assumptions to create products that solve problems. Often organizations I've found will dump tons of money and time to build a solution around an idea that hasn't been vetted or validated against market demand, actually talking to real users who experience a real pain. You know, there are products that are that are just built wrong, they're the wrong market. It's a confusing experience. The platform is hard to use. It's not the right solution for the problem. Or there's the right market, but it's built wrong, like a product that is, again, difficult to use. The market's already saturated and you're providing a less than optimal user experience for your end users. Or when the product is built right, but then it's the wrong market. Like it's a mismatch. Like there's, it's a really innovative technology idea, but then you run into like privacy concerns or hardware issues or, you know, like, like in wearable tech, for example, like it's not fashionable enough. And so you see low adoption because there's not enough ranges for the, for the wide taste of those in the market. But then when you find the right product, when you build the right product in the right market, because you've listened to your users, you've listened, you've conducted industry research and you've validated it, you've had an assumption and you've either been proven wrong or you've been proven right by talking to people who experience this pain, that's when you thrive. That's where the unicorns come from. That's where companies that are proactive have done enough research to actually validate and understand the idea to find the right solution that meets a need and solves pain. And I think that is the One of the biggest opportunities for product companies is rather than looking at what assumptions you're bringing in and building to an assumption, what is really missing is validating that assumption and taking the risk of being proven wrong before you build anything. You don't want to waste millions of dollars and hundreds of hours of time for something that may not even work. That's too much risk, especially now. Jason, do you think this problem mainly comes from you know from the top from leadership down because i imagine if leadership feel that the team are you know wasting time on a product which is wrong or they're not seeing evidence kind of quickly of take up of the product or it's just you know the the building of the thing is taking a really long time or something they might be a little bit quicker to just question what's going on and ask for more validation? Is that a correct assumption or not? I think it is a correct assumption in many ways because depending upon your role within the company, so like I as a product manager working with product leadership and executive leadership could be put in charge of an idea that an executive had in the middle of the night or, you know. in talking with someone across the industry. So I think that yes, it is very possible that some of these like assumptions or mismatch ideas could come from the top. It can also come from the side internal organizations like the additional cooks across the organization, other executive leadership, departmental managers and other influencers. So I found that there can be a lot of interference in idea management and assumption management from the executive team and others in the C-suite and other leadership positions. So as a product manager, someone who's responsible for executing and creating this vision, this is where stakeholder management comes really into play. Being able to have... Upward and downward communication and parallel communication out to the sides with your team, but also keeping the executives and other leadership informed, but maintaining clear boundaries about what you're building, what the expectation is, and the problem you're trying to solve. One of the things that I have focused on as a product manager when it comes to being a better product manager is maintaining those boundaries and really working with my stakeholders to stay focused on the ultimate vision. Yes, we have assumptions and we're working to validate those assumptions and the pain that our users are experiencing. Ultimately, we have to be very clear about what we're actually going to solve. You can't lose sight of the ultimate goal with all the other added noise and interference of tangential ideas and other assumptions. You have to be focused. you know, not only are you wanting to kind of do the job well, but you're having to sort of coach and align the rest of the business on how important it is to do the validation of, you know, this product is something that is worthwhile or this product is something that needs like time to validate because people, like you say, across the whole C-suite and in other departments will be like, well, it's obvious, just do it. Like we should spend, you know, at least a year building it. And then you're like, well, hang on a minute. Can we just take some time and slow down and just, you know, so it's always difficult for product leaders in that situation where they're having to do the work, but then also convince everyone else of why it's important to do the work. Jason, I'm going to follow up on that and build on what you were both saying. And we definitely want to dig into the practical of how you've done this in the past. But one more question to set up, which is you're talking about validation. Early on, it sounded like it's something you do at the beginning. But the more you talk about it, it sounds like it's not a one-time, let's do it once and make sure we're on the right track. There's more to it than that, isn't there? Oh, there's absolutely more to it. Validation is about understanding the idea when you enter the marketplace, but as you continue to enter the marketplace and serve your users, maintaining a constant flow of open feedback and communication. The worst thing you can do is stop listening to the people who use your product and buy your product. You have to be responsive because if you don't respond and adapt and meet the needs of your users as things evolve, Yes, you could hit the nail on the head at the very beginning when you launch your V1. I'd be surprised if you do, but you can hit the head of the nail when you launch your V1. But unlike life, death, and taxes, nothing else is certain. And so you have to build to the evolving needs of your users. Rules change, regulations change, tastes change. I mean, look at user experience of your favorite software from 10 years ago to today. It's not the same tool. And only the tools that you're still using for that long have been the ones that have adapted and evolved to meet your changing needs. And you have to seek continuous feedback, whether that is from a feedback option within your product, conducting win-loss analysis, looking at other user research, or asking NPS questions or customer satisfaction score questions. just listening and observing users as they use your tool sets. That is where all the real valuable feedback continues to come from to keep you afloat. The businesses fail when you don't adapt. I always love the approach that people take when they say about disrupting their own products as well. You know, having that kind of mindset of let's try and displace ourselves with something, you know, bigger, better, faster. Brighter, whatever it is, is quite a great view to have. So where do we start? We've got a new product that the CEO or whoever it is, the customer, probably the customer, who's like, I need this thing, build it for me, especially in enterprise. How do we then go about validating it? You've got to be proactive. Get out there. Actually talk to your users. There is an organization called Pragmatic Institute. And if you've ever taken any one of their courses, you've probably heard the term, nothing interesting happens in the office. I actually believe that quite a bit. We should be out there learning, getting out there, working with sales, working with partner success. working with our teams to get out there and really build strong relationships. And that is, I think, is the more critical piece in conducting this research and getting out there to really validate the idea. Another piece of this is product evangelism. We as the idea owner and visionary have to think it's the best thing since Betty White and sliced bread. We have to believe in the solution and we have to be the evangelist and proponent of what we're doing. And so when we get out there, We conduct industry research. We use tools like Gemini and Chad GPT and perplexity to start looking at market analysis and business research and industry analysis and even doing some light assumption validation. But after that, once you actually have formulated your hypothesis and your assumptions, you begin creating this story deck that facilitates the conversation, thinking of it like consumer research. You're building a story deck that tells, that illustrates your assumptions and provides a solution while also asking the end user or your audience that's in the room with you to respond and agree and disagree and speak about why they do or why they don't support those assumptions while also speaking to your idea and your solution about what they like, what they don't like, how much of a... How much of the pain does this idea really solve? And then gathering as much empirical evidence-based feedback as you can while you're in the same room with those folks. Yes, you can do product validation remotely, but there's something about being in the room to look at body language and to look at how people physically respond to the questions because I think... That is where you can really understand how you've wet the appetite of either the decision maker or the users that are in the room having that conversation with you. And then based upon all of those reactions to your idea and to your assumptions, you start getting things like value. How much does this actually solve the problem? And sometimes people even tell you, it's like, you know, I would pay X number of dollars or pounds for this. Like I would actually, I want this. I want it yesterday. You know, how much? How much can I pay for you to build this for me? And based upon all of that feedback, you then start iterating and re-validating your assumption with the next customer. You shouldn't ever build a product based upon one customer's feedback. It should be many. And as you hold this meeting, this hour, two-hour long meeting where you're validating this idea, and then you're traveling to the next event, you're talking to your next customer, your prospect, you're iterating, you're taking that feedback, you're grading that feedback. Not only are you grading that feedback on whether or not the comment the audience gave you, the prospective client gave you was good, bad, or indifferent. Like, was it a positive response? Was it a negative response? Or did they just not seem interested through their comment? But you also start looking at the client as a whole. holistically grading that client themselves. Like, are they a good fit? Are they an ideal user? Are they sophisticated enough to adopt your solution? Or do you need to build your solution in a way that doesn't require that technology, that level of sophistication? Yeah. I was going to ask you about the difference between what you were saying and what Teresa Torres talks about in Continuous. discovery habits and it sounds like the the key thing is getting in the room on a regular basis but how often are you do you need do you feel that you need to be in the room and who's going into the room with you when you said twice do you mean go out on the road for two tours do you mean meet one customer two times do you need meet two customers just if you don't mind being more specific on that one certainly i would suggest that you meet with the same customer at least twice because if you're validating the idea You're going to want to give them a follow-up because your first conversation is when you're asking them for help. You need to validate an idea. You're not selling anything. The next conversation is where you have validated your idea and you now have a honed solution that is ready to go. And this is where you start easing into the sales pitch. And it's easier to have that conversation face-to-face after having met with them. the second time after having met with them the first time, because you developed in that relationship with them in the first place. That makes sense. So two rounds of interviews with customers, how many customers, how far apart in general are you doing these things? Oh, goodness. I'd let's see. In my experience, I've done this where I've met with three customers in the same day, one time even having a flight involved. But you want to, I'd say you will start to see. consensus after the sixth to 10th client in customer. So once you, and I think Marty Kagan even mentions this number in his book Inspired, but I have also found this to be true that you'll start finding consistencies when you're talking to six to 10 customers. And when you start hearing those consistencies repeat, that's when you know you've really got something to go on. You mentioned something really interesting there and I think really important around validating the customer as well, like which customers you pay attention to in terms of their feedback. How did you do this when you were working on validating some of the products that you're working on? Like how, what does that process look like? Yeah, that process can be really tricky because when you're starting a new business and when you're starting a new product line, You're going to be enamored by wanting to capture the big logos, the big banners, those whale companies. But you have to be really careful because while it's very possible that your idea could meet something, could meet a need of a larger like FANG or Mango or whatever acronym that comes to mind type of company, with that comes demands. There's a price to that sometimes. And so I've often found that when I'm looking for perspective, clients and users, I go for those that are, I go to try and find those that are innovative and forward thinking, but often a little bit smaller. Someone who is on the bleeding edge of being an innovator or an early adopter, someone who really understands like the problem we're trying to solve, but may not necessarily be. that big whale of a company like others other mid-level mid-enterprise mid-level companies that can speak to the problem are off i have often found to be the best support system have you found that once you build up relationships like this with customers they then kind of almost become partners in new features or new products that you want to develop very much so i found that When you engage partners in the early stages, they become your biggest champions because you have established so much trust and helped them solve a problem, but also built a strong relationship where you both understand that both sides identify and know a problem and that you're working together to solve that problem. And so coming together on common ground, you find your biggest allies. and your biggest supporters who will help you succeed all along the way and even open doors for other opportunities. You get enough of those mid and small size companies that can open door and you gain that traction. That opens doors to the larger whales because you have traction and you show that you have a strong user base. Sorry, I'm really diving into this, but is there a risk there that they almost become too friendly and then they just become agreeable to everything you're saying. And they're like, yeah, great. Well done. We love this idea. Well, you know, that's good too. And instead of being a bit more kind of, I guess, real with their feedback or whatever. That is always a risk. And I think that is why as your customer base grows, you continue to listen, but you'll see the path change. Relationships are everything. Never close doors, but always open others because you will start to learn as your client base grows, the needs of your users will evolve. And so finding that right balance and priority amongst all those voices is also the critical part of being a successful PM. Jason, let's get into the practical elements of this. So you're working together in a partnership with your sales team or your success team or your biz dev team or whoever it might be as appropriate. Tell us about the actual session. What are you doing in advance to prep together? And then what does the session look like with the customer? Oh, yeah, the session, before you even step in the room, there's a ton of research. So you're conducting industry research, looking not only at the whole industry, but also the stakeholders that you're looking to interview. What are their problems? What are the things that they're facing? What news are they posting on their corporate websites? You really want to understand the audience that you're coming in to interview beforehand. You also want to understand... the industry as a whole in the problem. So that way, when you do walk in the door, you have additional credibility of not only trying to solve the problem, but understanding and having grot to the industry. Maybe you've had a few informal conversations with other partners or other potential partners beforehand, just to get a baseline or foundational set of knowledge. After you've conducted this research, you start thinking about, and you formulated your hypotheses and assumptions. Well, you then start building this discovery deck where you start cataloging these assumptions. And so that way you can ask your audience whether or not they agree or disagree with the assumptions that you've come up with. And that just, the floodgate opens from there. But you're constructing this deck to guide a conversation. And you have statements that are, you know, perhaps a little bit bold to trigger thought. and also help you show that you understand the problem and you want to make a difference and disrupt a little bit. But then once you have started the conversation by having those assumptions validated, you then start going into the solution and presenting your idea on how you may solve the problem that was just validated by the assumptions you've just spoken about. From there, you talk about features and timelines. And at the end of the presentation with your solution, you start asking the audience, like, well, what's the value? What do you think? What do you, how well do we do this? Is this, is this something that would meet your need? And then you also ask like, well, what, what tools are you using today to solve this problem? And you'll often hear, you know, pencil and paper or spreadsheets, or we're using this other competitive tool set, but man, your idea sure helps us. solve X, Y, and Z a little bit differently and meets our needs in a different way. And Jason, presumably sometimes when you're going through this process, the answer is, no, I'm fine. I'm solving this, but I don't have this problem. I'm solving this problem. Fine. All right. It's not a big deal for me. It's not something that is critical enough that I would spend any money investing in a product to fix it. And so What happens in that situation? Do you just like cut the conversation off short? No, I don't think so. I think if someone says, no, this idea isn't right for me, you want to ask why, because perhaps there's something that you've missed. And that really comes with the idea that, you know, I think every product manager, every product leader ultimately would love to be proven wrong. And to be proven that. I maybe I missed a mark. So that way you really know that, you know, this idea you shouldn't have pursued, but maybe there's something just a degree to the left where it's like, oh yeah, that is what I really should have built in the first place or where we should be heading down. So you want to always want to ask why. And ultimately, if it just comes down to the fact that they're happy with another solution or they don't need the problem, then that's okay because that means that that wasn't your ideal customer. And that in and of itself is a very valuable learning experience because when you look at that particular organization's responses and you compare that to others, you then begin to delineate and differentiate between who your ideal customer is and who is not your ideal customer. And that... is incredibly valuable because it lets you understand where you really need to market and where you really need to focus your product to the right user in the right time, the right market, so that way you built the right product. One of the other things that I found doing this type of conversation is sometimes people will say, yeah, it's a really great idea. And I can really see this working for some businesses and for some people. Or I know someone who would use this and you're like, Oh, okay. So you're being, you know, it's that kind of thing where everyone wants to be supportive and encouraging, but actually kind of what they're telling you is, this isn't for me, like, I wouldn't use this. And that's kind of what you need to pick up on in the conversation. Oh, yeah. Well, you definitely have to read the room. And it also really helps when you schedule conversations with organizations at all that may not necessarily be your friendlies. They could be... You know, you could have some of those outliers to really understand whether or not you're meeting the need. And I think that those conversations where you do have some tension and you do have some disagreement, those are the most valuable because your assumptions are being further validated and they're being redirected or better becoming more informed. And I think that those conversations are the most. valuable. Yeah. Jason, I was interested in hearing more about what happens after the meeting. So we've talked about looking at the results from one client or customer or potential customer. You have a whole thing about scoring your customers. Tell us about that. Oh, yeah. So you've been sitting in this room and inside this room is yourself as the product leader. You have the relationship owner who's taking copious amounts of notes. And if you're lucky and you have a product designer or another third person in the room with you, they're watching and observing everybody's reaction and taking notes about the actual environment and what's going on. So, you know, if you're after the meeting and you're in the car you've rented and you're driving fast and furious to the next appointment, you're grading your clients. You're grading those prospects, the comments they've made. Are they good, bad? Are they indifferent? You're reviewing the. prospect themselves? Are they sophisticated enough? Are they relevant to your user base? What did they say about buying the product as is or the value of the product as is or the value of the product if? And then based upon all of that feedback, you're iterating. Your designer is updating the user experience. The product manager is in the backseat updating the presentation with some refined assumptions. and you're taking that next version and you're going walking into the next prospect and you're having that conversation. And then when that conversation is done, you're doing the same thing. You're grading the conversation and the client and then you're comparing the previous conversation to the prior conversation to the one you just had. And then from there, you're normalizing and you're iterating again. Do you bring back some ideas from the first presentation or do you carry on with the second? It's all about quick iteration, quick conversation, in-depth conversation, and working to continue to hone the idea until you've started to see the consistency that shows you've got something that will gain traction. And I imagine... Sorry to mention it, but I imagine this can be sped up even more with AI as well today, you know, with AI potentially even taking your notes for you and then helping you update your presentation or pitch or, you know, prototype or whatever it is. I'm sure there's efficiencies to be gained between the meetings to update everything. Oh, yes. I mean, with the... The days of spending hours and hours doing semantic analysis manually are over. I'm very grateful to have tools that will enable semantic analysis and sentiment analysis so much more quickly. And there are products out there that help you do these very things like, you know, feed your notes into chat GPT or Gemini or even user research products like Proplexity or Dovetail or anything like that can absolutely help you. facilitate a more rapid process. And honestly, like doing this in person is a great gift and a great opportunity, but in a world that is now so vast and so well connected, virtual is absolutely even is possible too, but I would still recommend having at least two people in the room. So that way you have one who's presenting. and another who's observing and taking some additional notes. Because while these AI augmented tools are so useful, there's nothing quite like the human eye when it catches reaction in the changes in body language. Yeah, definitely. It's definitely missed some sarcasm in some of the meetings that I've been. I promise it wasn't me being sarcastic. So you've... been through this process a number of times and you obviously you know feel very strongly about the way it should be done is there anything that you would sort of change about the way that you're doing this at the moment like if you had to start this whole process tomorrow on a brand new product idea or concept or whatever is there anything that you would do differently to how you've worked before yeah i think one of the One of the things I would change now is that with the rapid advancement of technology, it's very possible to have working prototypes before you even walk in the door. And I think leveraging AI and other AI coding platforms, like you could Vibecode a working prototype and bring that in and get feedback from the prospects very quickly. And I think that I would absolutely leverage tools like that, sentiment and semantic analysis tools. There's so much technology to augment user research right now. I would absolutely embrace all of that to make this job easier. Because I just, you know, being able to leverage these tools to analyze and synthesize my research so much more quickly to help me iterate, to change the deck, to even give me feedback on my deck before I even walk in the door. Yeah, I would leverage as much technology to augment this process and expedite it as quickly as possible. Yeah, for sure. Jason, this has been fantastic. Thank you very much for taking the time out this week to talk to us about it. Oh, thanks, Randy. Thanks, Willie. I'm so thrilled to be here. Thanks, Jason. The Product Experience hosts are me, Lily Smith, host by night and chief product officer by day. And me, Randy Silver, also host by night. And I spend my days working with product and leadership teams, helping their teams to do amazing work. Lou Ron Pratt is our producer and Luke Smith is our editor.

Building the right thing is hard. Building the wrong thing is easy and costly. In this episode, Jason Sparks, Principal Product Manager at ReUp Education, dives deep into the discipline of continuous validation inside enterprise environments. From managing stakeholder pressure to proactively engaging customers in discovery, Jason shares battle-tested approaches for avoiding the classic trap of solution-first thinking. 

Chapters
0:00 – The risk of unvalidated assumptions
1:02 – Meet Jason Sparks and his mission at ReUp
3:02 – From college dropout to product leader
5:19 – Product-market fit inside the enterprise
6:03 – Why most ideas don’t need building
8:10 – Misalignment: wrong product, wrong market
10:05 – Executive interference and assumption management
12:33 – Validation is not a one-off
14:44 – Continuous discovery in practice
15:38 – How to validate enterprise product ideas
17:02 – Story decks, user interviews and field testing
19:11 – Grading feedback and customer fit
21:11 – The danger of over-friendly users
23:08 – The power of early champions
25:21 – Preparing for and running discovery sessions
27:35 – Value testing and competitor awareness
29:08 – When to walk away from the wrong customer
31:17 – What happens after the meetings
33:30 – The role of AI in user research
35:46 – What Jason would do differently today

What you'll learn from Jason 
— Validation should be continuous: One round of user feedback isn’t enough. Real product-market fit evolves through repeated conversations and iteration.
— Assumptions must be challenged: Build a culture where being proven wrong is celebrated, not feared.
— Don’t let leadership derail discovery: Product managers must set boundaries and bring clarity on the problem space before execution begins.
— Grading users is as critical as grading feedback: Identify the right customers to listen to—being nice isn’t the same as being the right fit.
— Use discovery decks to guide conversations: Jason uses bold assumptions, interactive sessions, and immediate iteration to refine ideas quickly.
— Tech accelerates, but doesn’t replace, human insight: AI tools for sentiment and semantic analysis are powerful but should supplement—not substitute—real human interaction.

Featured Links
Follow Jason on LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonphilipsparks/
Jason's website Sparksopedia | https://sparksopedia.com/
ReUp Education | https://reupeducation.com/