Radhika Dutt: how to build a good product

Radhika Dutt is the author of Radical Product Thinking: The New Mindset for Innovating Smarter. She identified four major product diseases but also some solutions to these problems. She will be a speaker at the PROW conference in Timișoara and here below, we talk about some tips and tricks, resources and examples of how to build a good product. 

Radhika Dutt’s book, Radical Product Thinking, has been translated into several languages including Chinese and Japanese. RPT has become a global movement with organizations ranging from government agencies to startups, outsourcing teams, and nonprofits that use this framework.

Radhika Dutt built products in a wide range of industries including broadcast, media and entertainment, telecom, advertising technology, government, consumer apps, robotics, and even wine.

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We wanted to know what are the common features which unite good products. Radhika explains:

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”My experiences across all these industries taught me three things that have become the pillars of the Radical Product Thinking philosophy: 

First, your product is your mechanism for creating the change you want to see.

  • Second, you have to envision the change clearly before you start building the product. Why? Because how can you possibly build your mechanism for change if you don’t know what change you want in the first place.
  • This means your product isn’t necessarily just the software you deliver – it also includes the training needed to use the software and the customer service to help a user off the happy path. You have to think more comprehensively about what your product is. 
  • Third, you can engineer the change (and your product) systematically by connecting your vision to your everyday activities. 

 

When you start thinking in this way, anything can be your product, whether you’re working in a high-tech startup, a services organization, a government agency, or as a freelancer.

Irrespective of the industry you're in, or what role you hold, you are working on a product. This way of thinking has helped me work across a range of industries. In fact, to date, I’ve never held two consecutive jobs in the same industry!”

5 main elements of the Radical Product Thinking Methodology 

 

What is the most important step when a founder wants to build a vision-driven product? What must the founder look at, and what are the main ideas one must consider for a good product? Radhika's answer: 

"It’s easy to default to being iteration-led rather than being vision-driven. This is where Radical Product Thinking comes in. The 5 elements of the methodology (vision, strategy, prioritization, execution and measurement, and culture) give you a clear process for translating a company vision into a product vision and strategy, and then into action. 

 

While these 5 elements use words you’ve heard before, e.g. vision, strategy, etc. you’ll see that RPT challenges conventional thinking. For example, until now we’ve learnt that a good vision is a broad and aspirational vision, e.g 'being the leader in XYZ' or 'democratizing blah blah', the RPT approach to vision is different.

The RPT framework offers a Radical Vision Statement worksheet that’s a fill-in-the-blanks statement to help you work through the following questions: 

  • Whose world are you setting out to change?
  • What is their problem and how are they solving it?
  • Why does the problem need solving? 
  • When will you know you can say “mission accomplished”?
  • How will your product bring about this world? 

Answering these profound questions will help you give your team the direction they need to understand the end state you want to bring about. 

 

Similarly, the RPT approach to strategy challenges traditional ideas in helping you define an actionable plan grounded in the real pain points you plan to address. Prioritization in the RPT way helps you balance progress towards the long-term vision against your short-term survival needs, and you’ll plan your execution & measurement to help you methodically evaluate if what you’re doing is working and what you need to change. Finally, the Culture element gives you a structured approach to engineer the environment that’s conducive to innovation.

 

Three best products of our time

To end our resources and tips talk with Radhika, we asked her to share with us three products that she considers best of the best of our times, the kind of products that are globally useful and have their vision driven strategy at their core. And of course, WHY.

Here is her top 3 list. 

  • Signal - A truly secure messaging app that is serious about security and privacy. Journalists, for example, use Signal, not WhatsApp. This is because WhatsApp stores metadata including who calls whom, when, how often, etc. and also uploads your contact list to their servers. Signal, however, does not store any metadata. It’s an organization driven by the vision that democracy requires free-speech and therefore they must protect users’ privacy. This vision has translated into how they prioritize features and is reflected in their product.  
  • Lijjat pappadums - Lijjat is known for making quality pappadums (lentil crackers you’ve most likely tasted in Indian restaurants). Their product was driven by a clear vision of giving financial independence to over 45,000 women by making high-quality pappadums without ever taking charity. In my book, I describe how they created this change systematically through their product.
  • No Man’s Sky - This is a great video game and is an example to illustrate that you don’t have to be altruistic to be vision-driven. The game is driven by a clear vision, of creating a contemplative and meditative game of exploring the universe. The game had a rocky start and the Hello Games team even received death threats in 2016. But they made a remarkable turnaround by persisting and staying true to their vision – it has since been a best-selling game for many years. 



    • You can learn more by reading the Radical Product Thinking book.

     

     Radhika Dutt will be a speaker at the PROW conference in Timișoara, an event for which you can register here. 

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