Part of the Process

First day of a new conference - SofaConf 2020 "A stay-at-home conference"  - that came about in reaction to COVID-19 and lockdown/travel restrictions. Overall very good content so far, lots of sessions that speak to real issues in doing product development in the real world. Slight technical issue with quality of Andy Budd's broadcast that was quickly sorted. The Secret Weapon to Finding Focus - Melissa Perri Melissa explained the build trap, where features are not seen as "what is the business value I want to provide" but rather "here are some features we want as  output". Netflix realised that they were in the build trap with Roku, and getting into competition with hardware companies that they could partner with. So they spun it out and so that they could then double down on their core competency. Now is the time to focus, what can we do to win? .... first you need a good product Strategy framework. alignment builds autonomous teams. The right level ...

Super short post to tell you about today's MIT Sloan Review hosted webinar "Five Strategies for Getting the Most From AI " based on the blog post of the same name  by Jacques Bughin. This shared the results of various surveys and research by McKinsey & Co. From this research, the highlights on developing a successful AI strategy are: you need to be digital based and native already, no leapfrogging straight from an analogy business don't try and do it on your own - they are not mature technologies yet, so use an ecosystem with startup partners and academia be bold - take the chance to reinvent your products The other theme running throughout was that when developing strategy you should think about growth as this lead to bigger profit gains than cost cutting. The advice was also to do it soon, from the companies survey there was a bigger boost from early adopters who innovated. Finally, it's about humans as much as technology. The top three reasons f...