Innovation in Product Development

I am constantly thinking about how to foster innovation in my product organization. Building teams that are experts at execution is the easy part—when there’s a clear problem, product orgs are great at coming up with smart solutions. But it’s impossible to optimize your way into innovation. You can’t only rely on incremental improvement to keep growing. You need to come up with new problem spaces, rather than just finding better solutions to the same old problems. So, how do we come up with those new spaces? Here are a few things I’m trying at Duolingo: 1. Innovation needs a high-energy environment, and a slow process will kill a great idea. So I always ask myself: Can we remove some of the organizational barriers here? Do managers from seven different teams really need to say yes on every project? Seeking consensus across the company—rather than just keeping everyone informed—can be a major deterrent to innovation. 2. Similarly, beware of defaulting to “following up.” If product meetings are on a weekly cadence, every time you do this, you are allocating seven days to a task that might only need two. We try to avoid this and promote a sense of urgency, which is essential for innovative ideas to turn into successes. 3. Figure out the right incentive. Most product orgs reward team members whose ideas have measurable business impact, which works in most contexts. But once you’ve found product-market fit, it is often easiest to generate impact through smaller wins. So, naturally, if your org tends to only reward impact, you have effectively incentivized constant optimization of existing features instead of innovation. In the short term things will look great, but over time your product becomes stale. I try to show my teams that we value and reward bigger ideas. If someone sticks their neck out on a new concept, we should highlight that—even if it didn’t pan out. Big swings should be celebrated, even if we didn’t win, because there are valuable learnings there. 4. Look for innovative thinkers with a history of zero-to-one feature work. There are lots of amazing product managers out there, but not many focus on new problem domains. If a PM has created something new from scratch and done it well, that’s a good sign. An even better sign: if they show excitement about and gravitate toward that kind of work. If that sounds like you—if you’re a product manager who wants to think big picture and try out big ideas in a fast-paced environment with a stellar mission—we want you on our team. We’re hiring a Director of Product Management: https://lnkd.in/dQnWqmDZ #productthoughts #innovation #productmanagement #zerotoone

🚨 New Elevation Capital thesis: Quick Commerce x Food! Indians today have come to instinctively check Instamart or Blinkit before Amazon for daily needs. Capitalising on this shift, quick commerce has expanded from a few thousand SKUs to 20,000+ in dark stores, with megapods offering 50,000 SKUs across multiple categories including apparel, electronics, and long-tail items. Despite horizontal expansion, 80% of GMV for quick commerce companies remains grocery-driven, leaving significant room for vertical specialization in other categories. These new vertical quick commerce models are bridging the offline-online experience gap, where quick is one axis of innovation, not the sole focus. One such vertical is food. It's creating new consumption by capturing offline and packaged food consumption rather than cannibalizing existing delivery. For instance, Swish has been at the forefront of innovation in selecting demand occasions and building consumer habits in this space. Some highlights: > Hot beverages unlock entirely new demand - traditional 30+ minute delivery made ordering coffee/tea impractical due to temperature and taste degradation > Quick food platforms reduce cognitive load by curating options vs. endless restaurant scrolling on traditional food delivery apps > Snacking and beverages drive initial adoption, creating opportunity to expand into main meals > Full-stack approach required - companies must control sourcing, cooking, technology, and logistics end-to-end > Food prep technologies include deep frozen, cook-and-chill, and fresh preparation > Current models primarily use partially prepared bases with final cooking steps completed at point of dispatch - similar to QSR > Key challenges: variety expansion beyond core dishes, price competitiveness and solving for trust/perception gap > Main meals (lunch/dinner) emerging for low-cognitive decision occasions like rice bowls or salads where brand matters less than quick, fresh delivery

Why do some companies struggle to go from 1 highly successful product to multiple highly successful products? The need for great operations is a common disease in companies that are scaling, especially companies that are going from 1-2 successful products to multiple products that are sold/adopted separately from the core product. Once a company reaches a certain scale, its senior management implicitly begins to view great operations as the most reliable marker of a given team’s (and its leader’s) competence. And they accordingly create incentives for operational excellence, uniformly across all teams. These incentives do tend to produce better results for the teams working on the core product. But these same incentives tend to produce worse results for the teams working on newer products. It is only a really shrewd senior leader who says to an early stage team at a QBR or product review: “it is fine that your team isn’t firing on all cylinders on operations. that is to be expected at this stage. the main & only priority right now is to gain customer insight & creatively build the right things that create differentiation for us in this market.” When senior leaders don’t say this, and when they instead fixate on the operations optics of early stage teams, it makes it nearly impossible for the company to replicate its initial success for its newer products.

In every boardroom I’ve sat in this year, the same conversation surfaces: why are category leaders losing momentum and how are challenger brands stealing share? After spending several decades in big corporate environments, the uncomfortable truth is that many traditional FMCG models were built for a market that no longer exists. We engineered for distribution advantage, built brand equity on TV and designed innovation pipelines with long lead, linear innovation cycles. But the new rules of growth are different. And they’re being written, unapologetically, by challenger brands. Here’s what I’m observing: · Private labels and challenger brands are reshaping the game. · Challenger brands don’t just compete. They reframe the category narrative. · They prioritize speed, not polish. Connection, not campaigns. · Packaging is now a media channel. Your shelf presence is on an iPhone screen. · Challenger brands leveraging social-native marketing are achieving 2.5x engagement at ~35% lower CAC than traditional FMCG. So what’s the real challenge? · Incumbents are often playing defense with structures designed for scale, not speed. · Innovation and Go-to-Market are still linear. · Talent is optimized for predictability, not fluidity. · Leadership often lacks the mandate to disrupt the very models they’ve built their careers on. · Digital remains elusive. They are still operating with an old-world marketing model This is where strategic leadership must evolve. I’m not suggesting we throw out what works. But we must build ambidextrous organizations capable of defending core businesses while addressing challenger brands. Corporations must embrace the new marketing model to succeed: · Build brand equity through content-led marketing that is culturally relevant. · Create influencer partnerships that help build brand cachet and extend reach. Creators are not simply media buys; they are brand builders. · Build tribes. Consumers are no longer just audiences; they are co-creators. Smart brands involve them in product development and foster identity-driven communities. · Build capabilities for precision targeting. It’s not just about reaching more people; it’s about being relevant to the right people. · Design a turbo-charged innovation model. Shorten the feedback-to-launch cycle and innovate in rapid sprints rather than traditional stages. · Accelerate cultural cachet through bold, attention-grabbing strategic brand collaborations and partnerships. In my view, the winners in this next chapter of FMCG won’t be the ones who defend their legacy the hardest. They’ll be the ones who evolve the fastest without losing the core. It’s about building businesses that earn their next era of relevance with new capabilities, new talent models, and new definitions of brand value. Because at a time when every consumer decision is a referendum on purpose, accessibility, and authenticity…being big doesn’t make you safe anymore. It just means you have more to unlearn.

Underwriting is about to experience the same disruption payments saw with UPI silent, intelligent, and hyper-personalized. Traditional actuarial models, largely built on age, gender, and medical history, are no longer enough to accurately price risk. The future of underwriting is about 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥-𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞, 𝐀𝐈-𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐤 𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧. A McKinsey study estimates that 𝐀𝐈-𝐞𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞𝐝 𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫𝐰𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐮𝐜𝐞 𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐬 𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐬 𝐛𝐲 𝐮𝐩 𝐭𝐨 𝟐𝟎% through more accurate segmentation and predictive modeling. Insurers are already leveraging geolocation, wearable data, and transaction behavior to assess actual lifestyle risk, not just what’s declared on a form. Instead of pricing a policy once at issuance, underwriting will become continuous. Transactional data from IoT, telematics, and payments will enable dynamic risk tiers such as auto premiums recalibrating monthly based on real driving behavior. With explainability frameworks (like XAI), underwriters can ensure AI doesn’t become a black box. This is critical as 𝟖𝟐% 𝐨𝐟 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐛𝐚𝐥 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐬 𝐞𝐱𝐩𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫 𝐀𝐈 𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 over the next 3 years The top insurers are building ecosystems. Partnerships with mobility, fintech, and health platforms will give them richer, more reliable signals, transforming underwriting from risk prediction to risk prevention. The underwriting engine will sense, learn, and adapt in real time, turning insurance from reactive protection to proactive resilience. #DigitalIndia #Fintech #AI #technology #Fintech #technology

At Amazon, we would often spend months working on a single paragraph of the PR/FAQ for a new product idea. This was the "problem paragraph". Done well, it could lead to a successful product. Done wrong, it will lead to failure. Here is how to write a successful problem paragraph: The “problem paragraph” defines the customer problem you’re solving. Without this, you will build a product that doesn’t address a customer pain point. It shows whether you truly understand your customer's needs, not just your company’s capabilities. To write this paragraph, start by precisely identifying the customer segment that will be served by your product. Great products are built for specific people with specific needs. For instance, designing a car for single urban professionals under 35 differs significantly from designing for suburban families with three kids and a dog. If you think your product is for everyone, you’re mistaken. A strong way to begin your paragraph is: “Today, [customer segment] has [problem], which they currently solve using [methods A, B, and C]…” Next, quantify the problem: → How large is the segment? (e.g., 17 million households) → What methods do they use? (e.g., 45% use A, 25% use B, 30% use C) → What are the tradeoffs? (e.g., speed, cost, quality) Here’s an example for a hypothetical robot vacuum product: “Today, 15 million busy urban and suburban professionals earning between $100,000 and $200,000 struggle to find the time and energy to keep their homes clean. Approximately 30% of these households use traditional vacuuming, which requires up to 2 hours per week. 55% hire a cleaner at a minimum of $50/week, and 15% use robot vacuums that cost $600 plus $100/year in maintenance, while leaving behind up to 30% of dust and dirt.” This problem paragraph quantifies the customer problem in terms of money, time, and other metrics where possible (in this case, the dust and dirt left behind). The problem should always be quantified; otherwise, how can you assess the potential value of a product that solves it? Well-defined customer problems are built on data-based insights. Insights are gleaned from swimming in data and metrics. This includes customer usage metrics, process or operations metrics, user interviews, demographic data, customer feedback, customer support data and anecdotes. The more data-based and specific your insight, the more accurate and helpful your problem paragraph will be. This is why the process can take months. However, distilling these quantified insights into a single paragraph gives you the best chance at building a truly useful product. At Amazon, this paragraph was always the most debated section in a PR/FAQ. This is because getting the problem wrong is the worst mistake you can make in building a product. Everywhere else, you can pivot. But if the problem is incorrectly diagnosed, nothing else matters. (cont. in comments)

🎯 Product Innovation Secret: Your Users Are Already Building Your Next Big Feature Dream11 SVP of Product Vaibhav Kokal revealed how their most successful feature came from an unexpected place: their users were already building it on Telegram. Their popular "Guru" feature wasn't conceived in a boardroom or through complex market research. The inspiration? Their own users... on Telegram! 🤯 Here's why this is brilliant: 1.Dream11's users were creating informal prediction communities on Telegram 2.Instead of fighting this behavior, they turned it into their "Guru" feature 3.Result: Massive engagement boost and organic user acquisition 🎯 Key Takeaways: • Your best product ideas might be hiding in plain sight • Innovation often means observing and adapting, not inventing • Users will find ways to fulfill their needs - your job is to make it easier 🔍 Real-World Application: → Check your app's Reddit/Discord/Telegram communities → List the top 3 unofficial workarounds users have created → Evaluate which one could become your next native feature 💡 This reminds me of how Instagram stories came from observing how people were using Snapchat, or how Twitter's hashtags emerged from user behavior. 👉 Watch the full breakdown on my Behind The Featuren YouTube Channel: Link in comments #ProductInnovation #UserBehavior #ProductStrategy #FeatureDiscovery #ProductGrowth #GameDesign #GrowthStrategy

India’s food landscape is shifting fast. The recently released Godrej Food Trends Report 2026, built on inputs from hundreds of industry experts, lays out clear trends that F&B brands can’t afford to ignore. From an F&B perspective, here’s what brands need to internalise - + Savoury protein is the next big format → Sweet protein has hit fatigue. The pivot is toward namkeen - bhel bars, high-protein kebabs, street-food-flavoured protein snacks. Backed by new manufacturing tech, this category is primed to scale. + Fibre is the new protein → ‘Fibremaxxing’ is going mainstream. Gut-health awareness, GLP-1 diet influence, anti-UPF sentiment - all pushing in the same direction. Fibre-fortified snacks and RTE products have a real runway. + Snacking needs a mood brief, not just a taste brief → Mindful indulgence is what drives the next generation of snack loyalty, like nostalgic flavours, mood-enhancing cues. + Beverages → Savoury-forward cocktails - fat-washed, fermented, umami-rich - are redefining the bar occasion. For beverage brands, the brief is shifting. Complexity and cultural storytelling over sweetness and high ABV. + Q-commerce is reshaping home cooking → ‘Assisted cooking’ - quality base preps + consumer-finished dishes - is a product innovation white space that didn’t exist three years ago. + Flavour boldness is non-negotiable → India isn’t chasing global fads. It’s doubling down on teekha-chatpata roots. Innovation that plays it safe on flavour will get ignored. + Sweets & desserts → Mithai is going Indo-modern - texture mashups, western influences, multi-sensory indulgence. The traditional sweet is being reinvented. + Provenance sells → GI tagging, micro-region storytelling, and women-led agri sourcing are becoming premium brand assets - not just CSR footnotes. In today’s world, consumer signals - expressed and otherwise - are multiplying fast. Brands that read them early and build them into innovation pipelines won’t just keep up. They’ll own the shelf. #trends

Do you want to create radical innovations? Then stop thinking in just one dimension. One of the models I use most—especially when aiming for radical innovation—is the “10 Types of Innovation” by Larry Keeley and his co-authors. Why? Because it forces you to look beyond the product. Most organisations innovate in just one or two areas: • A better product • A new feature • Maybe a shiny service That’s not enough. True innovation happens when you combine multiple types: • Profit model • Network • Structure • Process • Product performance • Product system • Service • Channel • Brand • Customer engagement Here’s the key insight: If you want something truly new, you need to tick at least five of these boxes. Not one. Not two. Five. That’s when competitors struggle to copy you. That’s when customers feel the difference. That’s when innovation becomes strategic—not incremental. So next time you work on an idea, ask yourself: How many boxes are we really ticking? #innovation #strategy #businessinnovation #leadership #growthmindset #disruption #innovationmanagement #futureofwork

Most high fashion brands still dismiss entirely 3D technology, driven by fear of disruption and arrogance toward novelty, believing it only belongs to fast fashion and cost-cutting. It’s true that most 3D applications we see are focused on basics and mass production, but that’s only one side of the story. When applied to high fashion, 3D is an insanely powerful tool. It allows us to realize intricate designs within hours instead of days or weeks of draping and correcting. It doesn’t just unlock creative freedom, but most importantly: it gives us much more flexibility to change ideas without heavy consequences on timing and budgets. In hyper creative luxury industry, where workflows are non-linear and ideas evolve by the second, this is a game changer. I’m lucky to be at Acne Studios, a progressive luxury fashion house with a Swedish mindset that embraces innovation. I’ve had the freedom to develop my own 3D-first workflow, pushing digital craftsmanship into couture-level precision. To operate at this level, though, requires a unique blend of expertise far beyond what’s needed in fast fashion’s 3D work and traditional luxury patternmaking: 1. Traditional mastery The foundations of patternmaking and draping at a luxury level are non-negotiable. They teach you how a nice armhole should curve, when to add ease or stretch, when to apply bias or work with the grain of the fabric, etc. and operate with 0.1 mm precision. Without that, it’s easy to create garments that look good on screen but fail to fit right or comfortably in real life. 2. Technical depth You also need to be a bit of a computer nerd, understanding every parameter, especially CLO3D’s fabric physics. You need to know which values correspond to which behavior and how to fine-tune them depending on the fabric and silhouette. Otherwise, you risk making fabrics appear beautifully fluid on screen but end up with garments that again don’t fit in real life 3. Spatial awareness Finally, strong 3D spatial intuition is essential for any 3D workflow. Navigating a 3D space on a 2D screen isn’t always intuitive for those who didn’t grow up with Minecraft or the Sims, especially when you need to zoom in and out to fine tune everywhere, observe the simulation from different angles to spot any flaws. But with time, it becomes second nature. With curiosity and consistency, everything is possible. This is a continuous learning path, blending craftsmanship, technical precision, and digital intuition. The future of high fashion isn’t about rejecting tech. It’s about reimagining couture through it.