It's old news now but Ian Hickson's post on leaving Google after 18 years introduced a really a really fascinating idea. It's a great read throughout - and in places surprisingly direct and acerbic about senior Google managers - but the bit that particularly stood out to me was this: 'Google's culture eroded. Decisions went… Continue reading With benefits
Lesson 01
Here's the first update from an experiment we're doing at Make. Believe. We started on our first project (mkblv01, in homage to Factory Records) towards the end of June. It's a start up called 'YumTuc'. And I know the founder George Thwaites because he's an old friend from Bristol University (and I mean old, that… Continue reading Lesson 01
What shall we talk about?
Yesterday was 'Mind the Product' - a conference for product people at the Barbican and online. Of course, it was a hugely polished affair with a wide selection of extremely interesting speakers. It absolutely reminded me of what I like about attending conferences. A few highlights: Tim Hartford ('the undercover economist') picked out a few… Continue reading What shall we talk about?
Back to the start
So I'm starting something new. Or perhaps more accurately, several new things. Some of them are my things and some of them my clients'. I don't have a lot of business philosophy to dole out. I get a bit stuck after 'work hard' and 'try to be nice to people'. But there is a new… Continue reading Back to the start
Model behaviour
With all this talk about the jobs that will be lost to AI, such as BT's perhaps-slightly-premature job hack, it might be easy to assume that the sort of roles at risk are unglamorous, middle management paper pushers or jobs in call centres. But anyone who's spent a bit of time playing with tools like… Continue reading Model behaviour
More rinsing: Is it a product or a feature?
Yes, the customer wants it, but do they want it from you?
Fear and AI
I saw today a post from Tom and Dean at Fluxx, 'You won't lose your job to AI. You will lose your job to someone who is using AI,' and read this excellent (quite long) post on NWSH which talks about what our attitude to AI should be. As David Mattin says, we have a… Continue reading Fear and AI
Platitude week
Well I’m excited to announce a new annual event on my blog. It’s actually run daily on LinkedIn. Only joking! I thought this might be as good a day as any to try and select my favourite product platitudes (or sayings, slogans, truisms, guiding principles) which are actually true...
A-Why
The recent flurry of excitement about OpenAI in particular and AI in general is certainly reminiscent of the early days of other technologies like web, web 2, and mobile. I suppose it is therefore predictable that we will see a hype-cycle being followed. Hard to know exactly how close we are to the top now… Continue reading A-Why
Rinsing
A topic which I used to find myself talking about a lot more is 'rinsing'. A few people have asked about it recently so I thought it was worth digging out some reference points and going over it again. The core idea of 'rinsing' is having a relatively rapid way to assess ideas for products… Continue reading Rinsing
Leading product 