Expertise is a curse for product development. Learn to Unlearn and Relearn.
We got a better product …
Our product has more features …
My product is superior…
We got the best product in the market…
BUT, we failed.
Ever heard these phrases?
Why a lot of enterprises with years of experience and expertise in the domain they operate failed to launch a great product?
The product launched by the people with less or no expertise in the area beat the mighty enterprise.
Any reason? Is it money, talent, or something else.
One of the most common reasons for such failures is SME ( subject matter expert) as Product Manager.
In my view, SME should always be in an advisory role. Product Management is to be handled how is open to experiment and listen. You need someone who can listen to people and observer them, interpret what they do, mixing the data which is collected with his intuition, imagination, and vision.
Subject matter expert comes with the Curse of Knowledge.
The Curse of Knowledge is described in Dan and Chip Heath’s book, Made to stick. The basic concept is that the more you know about a subject (the more you become an expert) the harder it is for you to communicate your knowledge. The more you know, the harder it becomes to understand and appreciate that others don’t know as much.
Both Startups and enterprises fall in the trap of the Curse of Knowledge.
The Curse of Knowledge pushes us towards clever and complex products or solutions.
Our expertise forces us to give our customers the very best, sometimes a combination of multiple products in the market. Because of our expertise, we find an issue with every offering.
This often leads to a race to provide the best product, vs a product that your targetted customer needs.
The truth, however, is what we already know is not relevant when we are discussing what users’ needs are
Have you ever experienced wherein a newly launched product turns out to be more complex than the existing product?
“The curse of knowledge is a cognitive bias that occurs when an individual, communicating with other individuals, unknowingly assumes that the others have the background to understand.”
The curse of knowledge kills your idea or product with each iteration, as your product becomes more complex and confusing.
Product development is all about keeping the customer at the center. You need to listen, test and simplify, simplify, simplify the product. You need to get into your customer's mind to understand his pain points.
The product has to be simple and stupid proof. The kiss design principle is applicable for a consumer product.
