Balancing Optimization and Innovation

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Curated Learning Resources

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  Designing an Organization that Can Optimize and Innovate

  Andy Johns, President, Wealthfront

  Andy argues that the most common drawback of functional organizations is that they start to over-index on business growth, and aren't designed to provide new and innovative value to customers (as opposed to optimizing the existing value propositions). The solutions are to design product organizations around the needs of the user and to provide explicit guidance on how to balance effort between optimization and innovation by product group.

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  Manage Your Time Like Google Invests its Resources: 70/20/10

  Noah Weiss, Chief Product Officer, Slack

  Noah discusses the importance of balancing innovation and optimization in product management. He draws a parallel between Google's investment approach and how product managers should allocate their time. Google spends 70% of its time on core search and ads, 20% on adjacent businesses, and 10% on new ideas. He suggests that product managers should allocate 70% of their time on short-term tasks, 20% on tasks up to a quarter out, and 10% on further-out tasks. He also highlights the importance of consistency and avoiding lumpiness in time allocation, as well as observing and looking for clues in short-term tasks that can lead to new ideas.

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  Dealing with “shiny objects”: tips for using both sides of your brain

  Steven Sinofsky, Board Partner, Andreessen Horowitz

  Companies need to balance focusing on existing products while also innovating new products and technologies. This is challenging but important for growth. Individuals within companies also need to exercise both sides of their brain by exploring new technologies while completing their day-to-day responsibilities. Steven recommends that engineers attend Conferences outside their expertise, explore new topics on their own, write about their ideas, and maintain a list of interesting technologies to expose themselves to new concepts that can spark innovation within their work. This cross-training of the brain can help them think beyond their specialist role and generate new ideas.

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  When and How to Build Second Products

  Casey Winters, CPO, Eventbrite

  Building second products is important for long-term sustainable growth. The need for new products depends on factors like the business model, market size/growth, and natural product adjacencies. New products work best when they address a core company need, like expanding the addressable market or improving monetization. Geographic, category and format expansions are often easier than new value propositions. To be successful, new products don't need product-market fit on their own, but should Influence overall company acquisition, retention or growth. Understanding growth trajectories through modeling helps determine when to invest in new products. As an example, Calm found success expanding into sleep products which helped build a more durable habit for its users.

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