What do product leaders need to consider when balancing innovation and commercialization in regulated industries like energy? In episode 500 of Product Talk hosted by Message Broadcast Sr. VP of Product Sid Shaik, Innowatts VP of Product Siddharth Dhar shares his insights on building successful B2B products that drive both technical innovation and commercial success, drawing on his experience in the energy sector. He discusses the importance of aligning product, marketing, and sales teams from the start to ensure a cohesive go-to-market strategy.

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Show Notes

  1. Balancing innovation and commercialization is critical for building successful B2B products, especially in regulated industries.
  2. Understanding customer willingness to pay and pricing early on is crucial for creating a sustainable business model.
  3. Aligning product, marketing, and sales teams from the start ensures a cohesive go-to-market strategy.
  4. Regulated industries like energy face unique challenges around long-term capital investments, safety, and equitable access.
  5. Leveraging data and analytics can help utilities improve grid operations, reduce costs, and enhance customer engagement.
  6. As a product leader, self-awareness of your strengths, weaknesses, and biases is key to scaling a business.
  7. Synthesizing learnings through activities like long bike rides or “meditation on wheels” can provide valuable perspective.
  8. Bringing internal stakeholders like engineering, sales, and customer success along the product journey is crucial for alignment.
  9. Focusing on speed vs. haste, and thoroughly evaluating scenarios, can help avoid rushed decisions.
  10. Fostering a safe, supportive team environment through rituals and trust-building is important for sustained success.
  11. Blending financial acumen with product leadership is becoming increasingly valuable.
  12. Exploring “product-led sales” models can be an interesting approach for niche B2B industries.
  13. Anticipating second and third-order impacts of technology disruption, like transformer shortages, is important.
  14. Balancing innovation, customer needs, and equitable access is a key challenge in regulated sectors.
  15. Leveraging open-source contributions and industry partnerships can be growth engines for B2B products.
  16. Maintaining a “general manager” mindset to balance commercialization and technical debt is crucial.
  17. Finding joy in creating value for customers and teams can sustain a product leader’s motivation.
  18. Product-led growth principles can be adapted for niche B2B industries through “product-led sales” models.
  19. Utilities are undergoing a customer engagement transformation, driven by changing consumer expectations.
  20. Navigating the tension between technology disruption and ensuring equitable energy access is an ongoing challenge.
About the speaker
Siddharth Dhar Innowatts, VP, Product & GTM Member

Sid Dhar is a results-driven Product and GTM leader with over 16 years of experience in B2B SaaS. He champions a “Product Led” customer-centric mindset, driving innovation through deep empathy and creativity while accelerating revenue growth via strategic partnerships and product commercialization. Sid’s leadership has garnered recognition from the Department of Energy, Amplitude Product50, and Federal Energy Reserve Commission. He holds a B.S. in Electrical and Communication Engineering (University of Mumbai), an M.S. in Information Networking (Carnegie Mellon University), and an Executive Certification in Product Management (Kellogg School of Management).

About the host
Sid Shaik Cloudera, Head of Product, Private Cloud Data Services

Sid is a seasoned Product Leader in the Data Platforms domain. At present, he runs Product at Cloudera for its fastest growing product line, Private Cloud Data Services. Prior to Cloudera, he co-founded a Silicon Valley startup-- Performance Sherpa; his company built performance engineering workflow automation for databases and middleware. Prior to those roles, he worked at Yahoo!, Qubole, Asterdata and Oracle in various Product and Engineering roles. As a Product Manager, Sid loves the creative process of discovering, defining and solving meaningful technology problems in large markets and enjoys scaling product businesses. In his down time, he enjoys taking his kids to soccer practice, he practices yoga, and advises startups.

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