Product Leader George Nurijanian Outlines 11 Strategies to Filter "Brilliant" Ideas and Drive Real Innovation

George Nurijanian, known as "George from 🕹prodmgmt.world" and a prominent voice in product management, recently shared eleven "unfiltered takes" on effectively handling product ideas from various stakeholders, including engineers, sales, and executives. His insights, posted on social media, emphasize rigorous validation, strategic prioritization, and a customer-centric approach to foster genuine innovation within organizations. Nurijanian, a Senior Product Manager with experience at companies like Xero, founded prodmgmt.world to provide resources for product leaders, underscoring his practical expertise in the field.

A core tenet of Nurijanian's advice involves a "tiny template trick" for idea submission. He states, "Make every idea fill out: what problem, who has it, why doesn't our product solve it already. Most ideas die right there because the person can't answer these questions." This method aims to quickly filter out underdeveloped concepts, aligning with broader product management best practices that advocate for clearly defined problems before solutions are pursued. Product idea validation is crucial to ensure market need and avoid wasted resources on products customers do not require.

Nurijanian acknowledges the unique challenge posed by executive ideas, noting, "Your CEO will never fill out that template. They'll say 'let's be practical, this is common sense.' Accept this reality now." For such high-level suggestions, he proposes tactics like the "Innovation Backlog" or "Backlog of Dreams," where ideas are scored quarterly and one or two are pulled for light validation, allowing product teams to say "yes, and later" rather than a direct "no." This approach helps manage expectations and maintain a structured pipeline, a common challenge in product leadership.

Customer feedback and data-driven decisions are heavily emphasized throughout his takes. Nurijanian asserts, "95% of 'innovative' ideas can be killed with three customer interviews. Just three." He further clarifies that an idea without customer input is merely a hypothesis, advocating for assigning skilled personnel to conduct proper discovery rather than relying on the idea's originator. This aligns with established product validation strategies that prioritize direct user engagement and market research to de-risk product development.

Addressing executive insistence on certain ideas, Nurijanian suggests, "If you think it's great, you run point on securing 3 paying customers. Then we'll talk about productizing it." He highlights that "Evidence kills politics faster than frameworks do," encouraging fast, cheap experiments to let data drive decisions, even when facing powerful stakeholders. Ultimately, he advises product leaders to "reduce the blast radius and protect the core roadmap" for C-level ideas that will be built regardless of process.