Product Thinking

Being confident is good, being overconfident is better. Right or wrong, and especially when wrong, it’s critical that you maintain that level of overconfidence you’ve carefully developed. With the steps we’ve discussed here, you can continue to work on being more and more overconfident in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. And you’ll be better for it. The world will be better for it. 

Remember, you’ve got the magic. The space magic. 

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Weekly newsletter: How to Be Wrong and Overconfident
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Twitter: @kylelarryevans and @producthinking

Camping trips are each a learning experience. So are each time we create a new feature or new product. We add to the tools we have in our packs and the experience we can draw on for using those tools in the field. 

With each trip, it’s important to understand what’s working and what’s not, what we need for next time and what to leave behind, and how to get better. You can get lots of insight from everything you read and see, but nothing will replace getting out and doing.

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Weekly newsletter: Camping Trips and Creating Products: Building Better Products By Learning Each Time Through
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Twitter: @kylelarryevans and @producthinking

Tony Fadell led the incredibly successful teams that built the iPod, the iPhone, and the Nest Thermostat. He also led or was part of other teams that failed just as big. So his new book Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making is now one of my new favorites for building meaningful products. A great product management and UX book review to check out.

Book: Build by Tony Fadell
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Weekly newsletter: Build by Tony Fadell: Book Review
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Twitter: @kylelarryevans and @producthinking

We review the newsletters and episodes from this month, including product principles, extreme open-mindedness, and our book review on How Innovation Works. We also look at other articles on Free Will and podcasts from Product by Design (my other show) to interviews with CEOs and VCs. And a great thread on dragonflies.

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Weekly newsletter: Extreme Open-Mindedness, Free Will, and Reorgs: Monthly Wrap from June
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Twitter: @kylelarryevans and @producthinking

Moving fast is difficult. Moving fast as teams grow is even more difficult. With a million decisions to make each day, how can you ensure everyone is making the right ones? A good vision and strategy will get you part of the way there, but what about the tiny tradeoffs that happen day-to-day? 

By establishing principles and tenets for your teams and products, you can ensure everyone is aligned around the right priorities and the right frameworks, without having to discuss every decision. 

But what are principles? And how do we create them? And why should we? Let’s explore these ideas. 

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Weekly newsletter: Creating Product Principles: Developing A Framework for Alignment and Decision Making
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Twitter: @kylelarryevans and @producthinking

Extreme open-mindedness is the mark of great thinkers, especially great product thinkers. We are never done taking inputs and creating something new. The world is ever changing, ever evolving, and we must evolve with it. Our products must evolve with it. Our thinking must evolve with it. We cannot close our minds to what is around us, to the new ideas that surround us, and the possibilities that await. So keep your mind open, and go create.

Links
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Weekly newsletter: Extreme Open-Mindedness

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Check out our Product by Design podcast

This month we are reviewing the book How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom by Matt Ridley. Innovation is the reason why life continues to improve so incredibly fast and why we can expect and hope that our lives will continue to improve. It may not always be linear, but doing more, creating more, and making it more valuable is key to innovation. We need to ensure that we cultivate the right environments for innovation to thrive. 

Book: How Innovation Works
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Weekly newsletter: How Innovation Works: Book Review
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Twitter: @kylelarryevans and @producthinking

There is an old axiom that you are not your customer. And it’s true, you are not your customer. But you should be. Or at least be indistinguishable from your customer and potential customers because you know them so well.

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Weekly newsletter: You Are Not Your Customer: But You Should Be
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The Startup Owner’s Manual by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf is an incredibly useful guide for anyone starting a business or building a new product. Creating all the research and documents suggested in the book will be a ton of work for founders and product people. But the effort will create the foundation for a solid company and solid products.

Links
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Twitter: @kylelarryevans and @producthinking
Weekly newsletter: The Startup Owner's Manual: Book Review
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Check out our Product by Design podcast

Understanding packaging holistically is a key step in the pricing process. And something that should be revisited regularly. Our world isn’t static. Your market isn’t static. And your product (hopefully) isn’t static. So you need to constantly be thinking about the overall product packaging and pricing to ensure you’re correctly “dividing the value you’re delivering” between you and your customer.

I recently had a conversation with Dan Balcauski for my other podcast, Product by Design. Dan is the founder of Product Tranquility, a product packaging and pricing consultancy. This podcast highlights one point of our conversation and expands on a few points. You can find the full podcast interview linked below.

Links:
Podcast Interview: Getting Product Packaging and Pricing Right
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Weekly newsletter: Understanding Product Packaging

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Check out our Product by Design podcast as well