If you point me at a market and say "build a product for this market", I'm pretty confident I could do that and be the best.
That's quite a bold statement! Any market? A social network, an online retailer, a search engine, a mobile phone, a browser, an electric car? Give me a list of those books you've been reading! But then of course, we could create a paradox - we can't both be best, can we? :)
I believe creating the best product has an amount of luck in it. The better work you're doing - the better are your odds, but at the end, like making an Oscar winning movie, like writing a top of the charts song, like writing a bestselling book, like a perfect storm, a lot of the right things need to happen. But that of course shouldn't stop us from trying!
It would have to be a market where I can get a handle on the state of technology and its economics relatively quickly. I couldn't do it for biotech, or cleantech, or surgical instruments, for example. I'd also need to be able understand the users and their culture extremely well. I probably couldn't design a great breakfast cereal, or sneakers for teenagers in Japan.
I really meant this comparatively. Understanding markets is an order of magnitude harder than understanding products (at least to me), and is probably more important.
That's quite a bold statement! Any market? A social network, an online retailer, a search engine, a mobile phone, a browser, an electric car? Give me a list of those books you've been reading! But then of course, we could create a paradox - we can't both be best, can we? :)
I believe creating the best product has an amount of luck in it. The better work you're doing - the better are your odds, but at the end, like making an Oscar winning movie, like writing a top of the charts song, like writing a bestselling book, like a perfect storm, a lot of the right things need to happen. But that of course shouldn't stop us from trying!