Currently an Innovation Director, looking for a next step. Title confuses everyone, but it's like running an external innovation lab for big non-tech clients. it's a mix of strategy to work with clients (primarily in retail) to identify a digital product opportunity (think novel AR app features, machine vision in-store, staff voice AI, etc), prototyping and either partnerships or product management to scale it. There's a few innovation lab roles like this out there: Deloitte, Nike, lululemon etc have them but blind applications failed there. Face the added hurdle I was outside the US for 3 years and my network in US is now shot. Current YoE is 3.5 post-MBA, TC is 240. I ultimately just like working with emerging tech and identifying new kinds of solutions it can enable - was an engineer for 5 years pre-MBA. No real desire to be in senior leadership unless it's a product I'm really passionate about. I feel like I need to pick a lane: either PM, strategy (I have 2 years corporate strategy before this) or maybe partnerships. Very early stage VC also came up, but those roles are very rare. So now I'm looking at PM in places like Amazon and Walmart but effectively lose at least 2 YoE if not more. I've launched products to 10M users, but doesn't seem to count without the PM title. Any thoughts on other avenues to explore and how to connect to them? #productmanager #retail #ecommerce #innovation #
Yeah big +1 to doing PM roles at relevant startups in AR/VR, deep ML, IoT etc.
My real interest is in AR/VR, if i wanted a PM role related to that, is either of these options better: - Finding a PM role at a startup doing AR/VR vs - A non-AR/VR related PM role at a place like Amazon, Microsoft or Walmart Ie, should I go for a known brand or functional expertise, especially if I don't have these brands on my resume. Closest thing I have to tech so far is Samsung.
PM role at smaller companies may enable you to jump to bigger fish later