(2024-01-02) Cagan The Power Of Visiontypes

Martin Cagan: The Power of Visiontypes. I met someone that tried to argue to me that Apple was “an extremely successful company even though they didn’t know how to innovate.” I wasn’t sure I was hearing this correctly. The person went on to point out how in the early days of Apple, Steve Jobs got a demo at Xerox PARC (the renown Palo Alto Research Center) of an early desktop computer with a graphical user interface, and he “just copied that.”

anyone that thinks someone can see a demo of a prototype, and then “just copy that” on an entirely different computer and ecosystem, into an actual viable product, has likely never tried to build a product before. (Maybe they should have said "invent" instead of "innovate"?)

What I do believe happened, is that the PARC demo inspired Steve Jobs’ product vision for what a desktop computer could be.

The power of a compelling visiontype is that it helps you to imagine a future that could be, if only you could discover how to make that vision a reality.

the number of true innovations, both large and small, required to convert that product vision into product reality would take entire books to describe.

Moreover, while there’s a bit of problem discovery that goes into a strong product vision, the vast majority of the product discovery work and hence innovation comes after the product vision, and is mainly solution discovery and of course product delivery.

Apple was the first to discover and deliver this vision as an actual product. And providing value to your customers and your company is what innovation is all about.