Doshi: Product sense decomposes into cognitive empathy, domain knowledge, and creativity
Shreyas Doshi · Shreyas Doshi: Better Teams, Better Products · Sep 5, 2023 · at 1:10:57
Product leader Shreyas Doshi discusses how professionals can systematically develop their competence by breaking vague skills like product sense into actionable elements.
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“Product sense has three components. The first is cognitive empathy. Which is, do I understand how you think as a user, how customers think, how they approach situations, what will resonate for them or not, right? That is cognitive empathy. Second is domain knowledge, right? Do I understand enough about this domain, about the technology, about the market, about the competition, et cetera, such that I can make a decision that will differentiate us, such that you know, I do understand regulation and the limitations of what we can get done, et cetera, right? So that's kind of domain knowledge. And then the third piece is creativity. And creativity is about taking these two inputs, which is cognitive empathy and domain knowledge, and turning it into a concrete proposal for what we are going to build. So you can have the first two, but if you don't have the creativity on your team then you can take all those inputs, but you won't be able to convert those inputs into a compelling product proposal and a compelling UX and a compelling go-to-market approach and a marketing approach and so on.”
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