
Product Misjudgment - popcorn49
https://blog.appacademy.io/product-misjudgment-imperfect-science-understanding-peripheral-environment/
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boffinism
> Firms rarely fail for a lack of effort, but rather an inability to
> adequately consider the complex dependencies of all the things happening
> around them.

This is why I don't work very hard. Not entirely kidding. What'll make or
break the company isn't me grinding away churning out incremental features and
fixing tiny bugs. What'll make the difference is whether someone spots the
game-changing opportunity, whether it's a product innovation, a business model
or a particular partnership. To spot that kind of thing you have to give
yourself some space and not have your head down all the time.

~~~
OmarIsmail91
Couldn't agree more.

The challenge then becomes how do you build a prepared mind to be able to
observe and think about the world in such a manner. My usual answer here is
just to read widely, do deep dives into periods of history where these kinds
of changes happen, and maintain a pulse on what changes

~~~
rocky1138
Outgoing: a huge advertising campaign helps.

Incoming: talk to a LOT of people. There needs to be people at companies who
do nothing but just listen to what people outside of the company's bubble are
saying.

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spandrew
I have not found this to be true in my own professional life. While we do not
want to diminish the contributions of the individual coders, designers,
marketers, etc. in the process of bringing a product to life. It's VERY hard,
with all of those human opinions and ideas in the mix, to focus on a product
vision and see it come to life.

Someone won't like the design, someone will see the code complexity and use
that as a litmus test that things are horribly awry and resourcing needs to be
rethought, etc.

The "visionaries" are celebrated precisely because they faced down the
machine, and helped pull it to the destination they wanted it to go in... and
their idea works. They were right... and succeeded on a rare level of
effectiveness. People are still generally very happy with their iPhones a
decade later. It's mind boggling to me... is THIS design actually that
timeless? Wow. I wouldn't have bet on that.

Them being right isn't a common thing, either. For every Steve Jobs there are
a million talented people who managed to focus the process and their idea just
wasn't that hot.

