RAFFIAPALM

Resources for product teams from industry experts.

mental models

  • Incubation can be particularly helpful after hearing other people’s ideas. You may not think of new ideas right away, but odds are, your brain is still working on it in the background. So, if you get stuck, sleep on it. Tomorrow will likely bring fresh ideas. Another common way of getting unstuck is to look to analogous products for inspiration.

    For many product teams, this means competitive research. You should draw inspiration from your competitors, but look broader than that. Many innovative ideas come from unrelated domains.

    — Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value by Teresa Torres

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • Opportunities framed from your company’s perspective: Product teams think about their product and business all day every day. It’s easy to get stuck thinking from your company’s perspective rather than your customers’ perspective. However, if we want to be truly human-centered, solving customer needs while creating value for the business, we need to frame opportunities from our customers’ perspective.

    No customer would ever say, “I wish I had more streaming entertainment subscriptions.” But they might say, “I want access to more compelling content.” Review each opportunity on your tree and ask, “Have we heard this in interviews?” If you had to add opportunities to support the structure of your tree, you might ask, “Can I imagine a customer saying this?” Or are we just wishing a customer would say this?

    — Continuous Discovery Habits: Discover Products that Create Customer Value and Business Value by Teresa Torres

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • To transcend means “to go beyond,” but this need not compel us to adopt an ornate dualist view that regards transcendent levels of reality (such as the spiritual level) to be not of this world.

    We can “go beyond” the “ordinary” powers of the material world through the power of patterns. Although I have been called a materialist, I regard myself as a “patternist.” It’s through the emergent powers of the pattern that we transcend.

    Since the material stuff of which we are made turns over quickly, it is the transcendent power of our patterns that persists. The power of patterns to endure goes beyond explicitly self-replicating systems, such as organisms and self-replicating technology. It is the persistence and power of patterns that support life and intelligence.

    — The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzweil

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • The way you break through to the mainstream is to target a niche instead of a huge market. With a niche, you can segment off a chunk of the mainstream, and create an ideavirus so focused that it overwhelms that small slice of the market that really and truly will respond to what you sell.

    The early adopters in this market niche are more eager to hear what you have to say. The sneezers in this market niche are more likely to talk about your product. And best of all, the market is small enough that a few sneezers can get you to the critical mass you need to create an ideavirus.

    — Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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  • There are three points of executive leverage in strategy making. The first is to manage the cost structure, or values of the organization, so that orders of disruptive products from ideal customers can be prioritized. The second is discovery-driven planning — a disciplined process that accelerates learning what will and won’t work. The third is to vigilantly ensure that deliberate and emergent strategy processes are being followed in the appropriate circumstances for each business in the corporation.

    This is a challenge that few executives have mastered, and is one of the most important contributors to innovative failure in established companies.

    — The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. Christensen

    Source: Amazon Kindle
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