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Quoted: If you are a Product Manager and/or a startup founder, you undoubtedly have solid instincts about your target market. But, if you are like myself, you have probably experienced times where it is unclear exactly what to do next. To that end, I have found the following resources helpful over the years:

A little verbose, but I generally agree. Effective product management involves a healthy dose of imagination.

Quoted: If your team is struggling with customer feedback, you may find this mantra helpful. Seek out a synthesis that incorporates both the feedback you are hearing plus your own vision. Any path that leaves out one aspect or the other is probably wrong.

Recommended by Andrew Chen ( http://andrewchenblog.com/ ), a blogger who I respect quite a bit.

Looks like this book has a greater focus on case studies and specific techniques as compared to Scott Berkun's book, "Making Things Happen".

Quoted: The Product Manager's Handbook is the essential guide to successful product management in today's fast-changing business world. Product and brand managers, as well as upper-level sales, marketing, and branding executives, will find the text thorough and informative as it explains and analyzes the product manager's role in both traditional, hierarchical organizations as well as in newer horizontal, team-driven decision-making structures.

Agreed. At Microsoft, this was sometimes a source of tension between marketing and Program Management.

Quoted: So what’s the cure? True perspicacity into the needs of a user base is the result of talking with customers, and complementing that direct knowledge with data from a larger sample. Qualitative research alone gives you direction and awareness of issues – and I fully admit that awareness is 70% of the solution. But quantitative research gives you conviction regarding the extent of issue.

Quoted: The second kind we can call, "game changers." These are the remarkable innovations that make not switching painful. The sort of free prize inside that reminds the unswitched that not having switched yet is painful. It doesn't have to be a totally recasting of all that a product stands for. Interesting for me to note that Time Machine might be Apple's latest game changer.