Inessa Lurye, as the Senior Director of Product and head of Women's Health at Hinge Health, identified a substantial market gap and shares her journey of developing a virtual program that has now served over 30,000 women. She has held product leadership roles at venture-funded startups, government agencies, and large corporations, and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, an MPP from the Kennedy School, and a BA from Swarthmore.
Inessa shares key aspects of product development, such as recognizing a true market opportunity, structuring teams for new market pursuits, and proving ROI when launching a new product.
During product development, Inessa and her team focused on fostering empathy and understanding among team members through direct customer interactions. Throughout the episode, practical insights and lessons learned are shared, emphasizing the significance of collaboration, innovation, and customer-centric approaches in product management and development. The conversation also touches on strategies for dealing with difficult stakeholders and addressing their concerns proactively.
Resource Links
Visit the Hinge Health website
Celebrate Inessa’s 2023 Product Management Leader of the Year Award
Visit the Product Science Group website
Explore Product Science Workshops and Courses
Quotes from Inessa Lurye:
"So initially we had a really focused, dedicated tiger team before any engineering was staffed... We were speaking [to] members or potential members, like really doing in-depth research to understand this space." - Inessa Lurye
"We integrated the measurement of baseline data around pain and symptoms and specific patient reported outcomes... into our initial application to get a baseline and then into our app experience." - Inessa Lurye
"We had our pelvic floor physical therapists and Hinge Health... a group of clinical specialists who are PTs that work with the product team to develop new products." - Inessa Lurye
Lab Notes
Lab Note 602.1 is Great product leaders use all of the product science principles to succeed
“You've got continuous discovery and delivery with a robust program around encouraging team members, product managers and their teams to get involved in customer conversations and bring engineers and designers in. And you've got the empowered teams with her talking about team structure and how they put those teams in place. And the teams were well staffed with UX research, with department physical therapy, SMEs with engineers and designers and product managers.” - Holly Hester-Reilly (29:16)
Lab Note 602.2: Include a subject matter expert on your cross-functional team for a tighter feedback loop
”The most novel for me in that tiger team was what they called the Product PT, the Product Physical Therapist. So the subject matter expert being part of that team, really understanding the customer.” - Dina Levitan (30:50)
Lab Note 602.3: Evidence comes from customers, forums, and subject matter experts
“They also heard from customers in online forums like Facebook groups where people were going to talk about these things and they were seeing it from both people who were already their customers interacting with their other products and services and from people who were out in the market, who might not have been their customers, but who were talking about these problems, trying to find solutions to them, which tells you that they care about this problem enough to try to change their behavior to fix it.” - Holly Hester-Reilly (33:11)
Lab Note 602.4: When your buyers aren’t your users, make it easy for buyers to see the outcome
"One of the things that she did really beautifully was build in the measuring mechanisms so that as they built out their pilot, they could start to gather actual data so that they could come back and say to their customers, who were the people who were paying for the healthcare - These are the impacts we're making on your patients. And here's why you should be paying for this health care, because it has these benefits for how they're experiencing their life.”- Holly Hester-Reilly (34:11)
Lab Note 602.5: Simple tools can incentivize customer touchpoints for an outsized impact
“She talked about how having those interactions changed the energy for the team, especially talking about the engineers. But the whole team having those regular interactions with customers really made people owners and active participants in the process of gathering insights from the members.” - Holly Hester-Reilly (36:57)
Lab Note: 602.6: Spend the most time on your biggest naysayers
“But no matter what the situation is, just thinking about what are going to be their biggest questions, what can you imagine them saying and how are you going to respond to that is a really powerful activity for a Product leader.” - Holly Hester-Reilly (39:11)
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