Teresa Torres is an internationally acclaimed author, speaker, and product discovery coach who empowers product teams to make data-driven, customer-centered decisions on what to build next. Her structured, sustainable approach—known as continuous discovery—integrates customer feedback into daily product workflows and helps organizations consistently deliver both customer value and business results.

Background and Education

Teresa holds a Bachelor of Science in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University and a Master of Science in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University. Early in her career, she led product and design teams at internet startups—including roles as VP of Products at AfterCollege and CEO of Affinity Circles—before founding Product Talk, her coaching and training practice.[1]

Continuous Discovery Habits

Her bestselling book, Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products That Create Customer Value and Business Value, introduces a repeatable framework for embedding weekly customer touchpoints, hypothesis testing, and opportunity mapping into product teams’ routines. The book outlines three core parts:

1. Defining continuous discovery and its benefits
2. Building the six discovery habits (e.g., opportunity framing, assumption testing)
3. Embedding these habits sustainably into team processes[2][1]

Opportunity Solution Tree

One of Torres’s signature frameworks is the Opportunity Solution Tree—a visual tool that helps teams break down a desired outcome into:

• Customer problems (opportunities)
• Potential solutions
• Experiments to test each solution

This roadmap ensures teams explore multiple paths before committing to build and continuously validate assumptions through small, iterative experiments.[2]

Product Talk Academy

Through the Product Talk Academy, Teresa has taught over 16,000 product professionals across 102 countries. Her live courses cover:

• Product Discovery Fundamentals
• Continuous Interviewing
• Opportunity Mapping
• Identifying Hidden Assumptions
• Assumption Testing

Clients of her coaching include CarMax, Spotify, Tesco, and other organizations ranging from early-stage startups to global enterprises.[3][1]

Impact on Product Practice

By shifting focus from outputs (features shipped) to outcomes (customer and business impact), Teresa’s methods help teams avoid “feature factories” and prioritize work that moves key metrics. Her emphasis on weekly customer interactions encourages teams to learn quickly, de-risk decisions, and foster cross-functional collaboration in product discovery.[4]

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Teresa Torres’s work has transformed how product teams approach decision-making—making customer insights a continuous habit rather than an occasional activity. Her frameworks and teachings remain essential resources for any organization seeking to build products customers truly need.

References

1. Who is Teresa Torres? - Userpilot
2. Continuous Discovery Habits - Goodreads
3. Teresa Torres Speaker Kit - Product Talk
4. Making Better Product Decisions with Teresa Torres - Maze
5. Train Your Team - Product Talk
6. Teresa Torres - LinkedIn
7. Summary: Continuous Discovery Habits - Evan Samek
8. Teresa Torres - Wikipedia
9. Getting Started with Discovery - Product Talk
10. Scaling Continuous Discovery in Product Portfolios - Platform Design Toolkit
11. About Teresa Torres - Product Talk
12. Teresa Torres on How to Interview - Lenny’s Newsletter
13. Teresa Torres - All American Speakers
14. Teresa Torres: Continuous Discovery Habits - Power of Ten