While generative AI (ChatGPT, etc) is red hot right now, and I’ve been rather cool on it. All of my experiments with it have resulted in rather ‘meh’, uninteresting, completely predictable outcomes. Maybe I’m missing something. Which takes me to one of my favorite tools for thinking through effects and consequences comprehensively, McLuhan’s Tetrad. While […]
Author: Garrick van Buren
A Frustrated Sentence
After working with a variety of tools purporting to help define and develop new products, I can tell you I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated by how difficult they are; Even something as basic as the underlying need, whether articulated as a ‘customer pain’ or a ‘painkiller’ or a ‘need’ (vs. a ‘nice to have’) the final […]
Product is a trailing indicator of demand. Marketing is a leading indicator of demand. In between is art.
TikTok-ify your Projects
My preferred definition of ‘project’ is from David Allen (of GTD fame): Projects = Your outcomes that require more than one action step. We don’t often think in how small these action steps are, but as of late I’ve been more aware of it. For example, my younger son needed a dojo patch sewn on his […]
Products Marketing Products
Earthed
I’ve always enjoyed the environment message within ‘Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs’ it’s like a kid-friendly version of Harrison Ford is the Ocean. Nature can reclaim the earth. The world will continue on without us. It’s happened before:
Is This a Good Idea?
7 Questions to Determine if You’re onto Something BigAfter decades of working with entrepreneurs, product executives, and creating a few of my own products (a few modestly successful and many absolute duds), I’ve developed a short checklist for whether an idea is worth the significant time and effort to develop into a product. Far too […]
Staying On Track 2022
Every Commitment is in the Calendar. For personal and family commitments, I use Apple Calendar. I’ve set up calendars for each person in the house w/ a phone (currently 4 people) + an overall ‘Family’ calendar. All these calendars sync across (at least) nine devices in hopes an up-to-date calendar will always be right at […]
Don’t Reschedule; Commit or Cancel
The world doesn’t actually care if you do the things on your calendar. It’ll keep spinning either way. In fact, in many ways it would prefer that you just didn’t. For, every time you do – the world changes a little bit. ‘Doing’ starts an chain reaction of cause and effect unsettling the natural course […]
History is a highly aggressive compression algorithm
I say this as I’m trying to extract 100ish people from being considered redundant.