There is a particular kind of meeting that should make any product leader nervous: the one where everyone agrees. Anyone who has led a project of moderate complexity knows the exact opposite situation well enough; the loud, confident voices that slow everything down without moving anything forward. Those that offer shallow alternatives with great conviction,…
There is something quietly telling about how modern songs are put together. The average English song repeats its central hook three to four times. More recently though, that number seems to have crept up to ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty. This isn’t just a modern creative trend. It exploits a behavioural principle called mere-exposure effect. The…
Most business advice and individual professional goals are to build moats. Create dependency. Turn your clients into cash cows. Thich Nhat Hanh said something that cuts against all of that. In his First Mindfulness Training, he said: don’t get too attached to these teachings. Use them as a tool, then move forward. It’s fascinating when…
There’s a peculiar contradiction at the heart of how products get built. Startups obsess over shipping fast, every week without a new feature feels like falling behind. Meanwhile, the giants move with glacial, almost arrogant confidence. Apple can sit on a feature for years, release it quietly, and users treat the tardiness as curation and…
Every product team has a mental image of their user. The problem is that this image tends to be assembled from existing data; who are currently buying, what they currently do, what they currently say they need. That is a reasonable starting point. However, it becomes a dangerous one the moment the team mistakes it…
There is a quiet assumption embedded in most product roadmaps: that more capability means more value. It sounds reasonable. It rarely survives contact with actual users. Service Focus: In 2018, Snapchat redesigned its app with the stated intention of making it easier to use, separating friend content from publisher content, reorganising the interface, adding algorithmic…
“Failure” is a verdict. A “prototype” is a question. That single re-frame changes everything. When we apply a design mindset to our own behaviour, setbacks stop being judgements and start becoming data. We observe rather than condemn. We iterate rather than retreat. The same detachment and curiosity that a designer brings to an early sketch,…
Discover the Unconventional What does a traditional Ukrainian folk dance have to do with a 396–1 boxing record? In my book, Main Batata Hoon, I explore the fascinating story of Vasiliy Lomachenko, whose legendary dominance in the ring wasn’t built on punches alone, but on four foundational years of dance lessons, something his visionary father…
Most people think innovation is about having brilliant ideas. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: ideas are arguably the easiest part of the entire process. The real work is before and after it. The most transformative products, services, and systems in the world weren’t born from a single eureka moment. They were built through a disciplined process…
There’s a particular kind of problem that doesn’t get solved in meetings. It sits with you, in the margins of a product review, in the pause before you answer a stakeholder’s question, in the nagging sense that the roadmap you’ve approved is logical but somehow not quite right. These problems aren’t unsolvable. They usually just…
Writing my books, Think Like an Innovator and Design the Future was, in many ways, an act of distillation; years of consulting work compressed into frameworks and principles that could travel further than I could. But frameworks, by their nature, are general. Your product isn’t. Your users aren’t. And the specific tension between what your…
Every product you’ve ever loved was designed by someone who first tried to understand you. Not your demographic. Not your purchase history. You! Your frustrations, your workarounds, your unarticulated wishes. This is the engine behind the world’s most beloved designs, and it has a name: empathy. Not the soft, feel-good kind, but the rigorous, observational,…
The world has massive problems with “cool” solutions that create even bigger disasters. From the 1950s, we solved convenience with plastic, and now we’re literally breathing it. We solved the fossil fuel headache with Electric Vehicles, only to hand the next generation nightmare fields the toxic battery disposal. This is what happens when you have…
This was an amusing piece of news from this Monday where a corporator suggested imposing a London-style ‘pay-to-drive’ plan for South Mumbai in India. India has 4x the population of the US, sitting on 1/3rd the land mass! Take a second to let that sink in. The absolutely obvious solution for mass transportation must be…
We have a strange fascination with frameworks. I certainly do. A framework is a visual shortcut that offers a bird’s-eye view of a complex idea. It helps us find our bearings when we’re overwhelmed by information. But frameworks can become cages. We obsess over the process until we find ourselves saying, “I understand, but the…