What's a "product"? Radhika Dutt argues it's the mechanism for creating the change you want to bring in the world. She is my podcast guest this week and is author of Radical Product Thinking. Her vison-led approach applies to anyone who wants to create change, from human rights activists to entrepreneurs to corporate innovators.

 

“Each person in your organization should be able to use their own words to describe the problem you are solving, who you’re solving it for, and why it is valuable to them. When you start with that, you can align everyone to march toward the same goal.“

 

Radhika Dutt is the author of Radical Product Thinking, a book about systematically making fundamental change as opposed to simply optimizing the status quo.

 

She was inspired to write the book after noticing the same set of what she calls “product diseases” throughout her work in businesses big and small over the past 20 years. “It was the same pattern of mistakes as we were translating a vision into reality.”

 

Radhika found herself asking whether only gifted individuals such as Steve Jobs or Elon Musk were capable of building world-changing products, and the rest of us were doomed to relying on cycles of trial-and-error.

 

Determined to answer that question, she and her team created a framework that empowered product developers of any kind to become leaders and changemakers in their organization.

 

Radhika’s research eventually culminated in her book Radical Product Thinking. A blend of inspiration and practicality, the book aims to answer the question: “How can we create change in the world through our products, and how do we do that systematically?”

 

She went further and sought to redefine the word “product” to mean “the mechanism for creating the change you want to bring.” From gadgets to services to causes to campaigns, Radhika makes the claim that anything that is vision-driven and created systematically is a “product”.

 

“Unless we have a really compelling answer to why is the status quo unacceptable,” Radhika says, “maybe there's no reason for our product to exist. We should start with the question, ‘What does the world look like when we're done?’”

 

Listen as we talk about Radhika’s approach for creating change in the world.

 

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www.radicalproduct.com