Building on Mark Pincus's frame of Proven, Better, New.
When building a product, you'll lean on New more than you should.
70% of the energy into the New.
20% of the energy into the Better.
10% of the energy into the Proven.
But you intrinsically care about your own product, and consumers by default don't.
You should flip it and focus on:
70% of the energy into the Proven.
20% of the energy into the Better.
10% of the energy into the New.
It only counts as "Better" if 10/10 of your customers agree that it's Better.
The vast majority of New ideas won't work for non-obvious reasons.
Proven ideas are more likely to work.
But when there's a paradigm shift, many of the previously Proven ideas no longer work, and it's only a New idea that can.
But which one?