Resources for product teams from industry experts
Great work tends to grow out of ideas that others have overlooked, and no idea is so overlooked as one that’s unthinkable.
— Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
Core competence, as it is used by many managers, is a dangerously inward-looking notion. Competitiveness is far more about doing what customers value than doing what you think you’re good at. And staying competitive as the basis of competition shifts necessarily requires a willingness and ability to learn new things rather than clinging hopefully to the sources of past glory. The challenge for incumbent companies is to rebuild their ships while at sea, rather than dismantling themselves plank by plank while someone else builds a new, faster boat with what they cast overboard as detritus.
— The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. Christensen, et al.
As companies tend to innovate faster than their customers’ needs evolve, most organizations eventually end up producing products or services that are actually too sophisticated, too expensive, and too complicated for many customers in their market. Companies pursue these ‘sustaining innovations’ at the higher tiers of their markets because this is what has historically helped them succeed: by charging the highest prices to their most demanding and sophisticated customers at the top of the market, companies will achieve the greatest profitability.” Among them are new technologies and platforms.
— The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth by Eric Ries
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