True West

I’m always seeing examples of good product thinking and practices in unusual places. Surely others in the Pollinator community are weird in this way that I’m weird.

For example, those folks involved in the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis & Clark expedition in the early 1800s? I learn about them and I think: man, that was a great cross-functional product team.

Americans who paid attention in 7th grade probably know this chapter of US history. In the early 1800s, President Thomas Jefferson, displaying considerable foresight, recognized the value of the vast western portion of the North American continent, then called the Louisiana Territory. Jefferson negotiated the purchase of that territory from France. He then established a national priority with long-term potential, though not a lot of short-term benefit: explore the newly purchased territory; establish relationships with the indigenous people who had called that land home for centuries; and find a route to the Pacific Ocean. He secured funding from Congress and appointed a couple of capable explorers, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark, to lead the expedition.

But even with their authority and resources, Lewis and Clark needed something more: expert guidance. Early in their journey, they made a critical addition to their team, engaging a phenomenal guide with deep knowledge, incredible endurance, and an impressive variety of skills: a young Shoshone woman named Sacagawea.

For three years, Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, and their team journeyed from St. Louis, MO to the Pacific Ocean and back. Along the way, they relied on the knowledge and generosity of many Native nations, whose contributions were critical to their success, even as the expedition foreshadowed dramatic changes for their communities in the coming years. And 219 years ago this week, on March 23, 1806, they said goodbye to the Pacific coast and began the long journey home.

The analogy of this expedition to our product work is a bit on the nose, sure, but I think it works. Concepts need vision, funding, and executive support. Leaders set direction and make key decisions. Teams need adequate resources and funding. Strategic partnerships can help a team reach its goals. Obstacles will be encountered, but we anticipate them and deal with them as they arise. And success depends on teammates leading in their domains, with deep expertise and skill.

Every day, the Lewis & Clark & Sacagawea expedition faced challenges: rivers to ford, mountains to scale, weather and wilderness to endure, and encounters with indigenous people with differing perspectives on the expedition’s presence and purpose. I like to imagine that the clarity of the mission’s purpose helped guide the team’s daily decision-making. We’re facing an obstacle? Let’s make sure we’re still headed west.

One more thing. That expedition’s official name was perfect for a contemporary cross-functional product team: they were called The Corps of Discovery.  

On to the Garden,

Around the Garden

A Unified Model for Product Making

Check it out: A Blueprint for Modern Product Development, Sam Quayle, Hyperact

We've mentioned this small British product consulting firm called Hyperact in past issues of the Pollinator. Here at SDG we’re consistently impressed by their content on product models and systems.

Hyperact just published this article with an ambitious title: A blueprint for modern product development. Any unified theory of product-making is going to be both incomplete and somewhat biased, but this is one of the better ones we've seen.

The article is thorough but accessible, with practical tips (“Don't just wait for opportunities to come to you. Regularly schedule time for proactive exploration of user needs, market gaps, and technological opportunities.”) and pitfalls to avoid (“Pitfall: Trying to be too scientific — You're not going to be able to truly validate hypotheses until you've shipped the real thing.”)

We especially appreciate the inclusion of a comprehensive diagram that lays out all the stages of their blueprint. You can download a high-res .PDF version within the article itself.

Highlights of the diagram:

• The "capture" step is a great way to describe the start of product-making. That’s where info is collected and understood, resulting in opportunities.

• Including "Later / Next / Now" to reflect the stages of a typical Now / Next / Later roadmap is a simple and clever inversion. When we’re capturing, it’s for later.

• The list of activities is helpful, though certainly incomplete.

• Our favorite bit: the "wrap-around" suggested by the fade-in and fade-out treatment of the graphics in the Focus row. That’s a visual cue that the rolled out product will generate new insights and opportunities, continuing the cycle.

Opportunity, Arise

Check it out: Ask the Community: Tracking Opportunities Not Related to Your Outcome, Teresa Torres and Melissa Suzuno, producttalk.org

Teresa Torres of Producttalk.org speaks and writes frequently on product topics. She’s well-known for a framework called Opportunity Solution Trees and for the book Continuous Discovery Habits.

We appreciate how Torres has built a community of product leaders and practitioners at her website, Producttalk.org. Participating in the community requires a paid membership. (Side note: excellent content on the Web often requires readers to pay for it. That usually means it’s worthwhile! Side note to the side note: The Pollinator is both excellent and free.)

Torres and her team occasionally share highlights of community discussions on their free public website.

They recently explored a situation that The Pollinator’s outcomes-driven community might encounter: what should product leaders do when you uncover an opportunity that isn’t related to the outcome you’re driving? In this post, the producttalk.org community shares a variety of techniques for dealing with this situation. This is practical, actionable advice, from real-world product managers facing real product challenges. Torres herself concludes the article with a good tip for organizing and collecting these opportunities.

The Language of an AI Hallucination

Check it out: A Hallucinogenic Compendium, Eryk Salvaggio, Cybernetic Forest

This 2024 essay explores how Large Language Models (LLMs) appear to “speak,” by exploring how they appear to “think.” In doing so, it seeks a new vocabulary for describing how AI works—because terms like speaking and thinking and writing aren’t quite right.

I should acknowledge that I approach these issues as a guy with a deep interest in and sensitivity toward language and communication systems. I struggle to consider text produced by AI engines to be “writing,” because, to me, the process of writing is not merely the outputting of textual content, but the process of decision-making, word-by-word, by which you work out what you think about a topic. AI-generated writing seems to skip these essential decision-making steps and jump right to the output part. In a way, it’s the opposite of writing.

Salvaggio explores these questions by addressing the relationship between LLMs, language, factuality, and, yes, product. I found the piece oddly reassuring. For example, check out how he describes the text produced by LLMs:

This passage describes as well as anything why I struggle to think of text generated by an LLM as "writing." It looks like writing, but that's an interface trick. Thank you, Mr. Salvaggio.

Self-promotion: Don’t get ensnared by your requirements

Check it out: The Requirements Trap, Jason Scherschligt, Solution Design Group, presented at Minnesota PDMA Chapter, February 2025

On behalf of Solution Design Group, where I’m a proud employee-owner, I recently gave this talk sponsored by the Product Development and Management Association, Minnesota Chapter. My talk’s thesis: product teams who strictly follow a requirements-driven product model are at risk of failing to meet their primary objective: to deliver value to your customers and your business.

A recording of the session is now hosted on Vimeo and available via the PDMA MN’s website, under the Past Events section. If you can stand to hear me ramble for nearly an hour on this topic, Pollinator readers might appreciate it.

Outside the Box

If you ever think: man, I need to feel insignificant, this is the website for you. 100,000 Stars is an interactive exploration of the relationships between over one hundred thousand stars, including our own Sun. It was created by a team of “space enthusiasts at Google,” as an experiment to test the capabilities of the Chrome browser. (The Pollinator can’t verify its performance in other browsers). You can zoom in, zoom out, traverse deep space to new clusters, and feel comfortably, reassuringly tiny.

Check it out at: https://stars.chromeexperiments.com/

About the Pollinator

• The Pollinator is a free publication from the Product practice at Solution Design Group (SDG). Each issue features an opening reflection and a curated digest of noteworthy content and articles from across the internet’s vast product community.

• Solution Design Group (SDG) is an employee-owned digital product innovation and custom software development consultancy. Our team of over 200 consultants and other technology and business professionals includes experienced software engineers, technical architects, user experience designers, and product and innovation strategists. We serve companies across industries to discover promising business opportunities, build high-quality technology solutions, and improve the effectiveness of digital product teams.

• The Pollinator's editor is Jason Scherschligt, SDG's Head of Product. Please direct complaints, suggestions, and especially praise to Jason at [email protected].

• Why The Pollinator? Jason often says that as he works with leaders and teams across companies and industries, he feels like a honeybee in a garden, spending time on one flower, moving to another, collecting experiences and insights, and distributing them like pollen, so an entire garden blooms. How lovely.