Noah Desai Weiss, Chief Product Officer at Slack, discusses why he disagrees with the dogma that all product development decisions should be strictly data-driven.
“What we used to actually say early on was, you know, data can help solve easy problems, but doesn't actually solve the hard problems. And hard problems are ones where you can't actually just experiment your way, you know, down incremental paths. You actually have to figure out, here's a big swing I want to take. How do you know that's the right swing? It's intuition. It's data informed. It's product sensibility. It's understanding where the market's heading. Those are the really hard tragedy problems that I don't think you can just rely on data as a total crutch for”
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Opinion
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PredictionNot checkable as stated
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Noah Desai WeissJul 13, 2023▶ 1:10:01Lessons from Slack on decision making, product-led growth, and taking big swings | Noah Desai Weiss
Opinion
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Noah Desai WeissJul 13, 2023▶ 1:12:12Lessons from Slack on decision making, product-led growth, and taking big swings | Noah Desai Weiss
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