Start at the End: How to Build Products That Create Change

Apocryphal insights aren’t directly observed; they just seem to be common knowledge in your organization.

That’s all a potential insight really is: the recognition of some potential split and the opportunity to move closer to the utopian end of the spectrum. A potential insight expresses the distance between those two universes and, once validated, allows us to start understanding the gap and how to design interventions that bridge it.

that limitations don’t exist on a scale: they’re either yes or no, 1 or 0. Someone does or doesn’t have a smartphone,

limitations exist precisely because we are explicitly choosing not to target interventions at them.

When people want to get from Point A to Point B, and they have a smartphone with connectivity and an electronic form of payment and live in San Francisco, they will take an Uber (as measured by rides).

The more overloading the cognitive environment, the more likely people will take the default,

limiting choice set sizes by offering only a few clearly differentiated products can be disproportionately impactful on the behavior of someone who is maximizing, as it means it is relatively easy to find the best.

pressures. As it started in the black car space, all of its competitors were focused on promoting pressures. It won’t be a black car, it will be a silver Audi with a minibar and a disco ball synced to your playlist, driven by Claudia Schiffer and powered by the defensive line of the Raiders! What Uber recognized is that the desire to go from Point

Again, the trick to getting good at pressure mapping is learning to let go of your natural assumptions, to see the irrational and the counterrational as opportunities.

there is really only one true limited resource: cognitive attention.