Decoding the Secret of Lasting Product Value with Krasi Bozhinkova - Productized 24 TalkInTen

We’re thrilled to bring you exclusive insights from Productized 2024, our third conference of the year! This series continues our TalkInTen format, delivering short, impactful conversations with leading voices in product and business agility. Each episode is packed with actionable strategies and real-world examples aimed at helping teams and organizations succeed in a rapidly changing world.

In this episode, we’re joined by Krasi Bozhinkova, an expert in product strategy and innovation, to explore the secrets of creating lasting product value. Krasi introduces the Critical Need Model, a framework designed to identify and prioritize user needs in a fast-evolving landscape. She discusses how product managers can move beyond incremental improvements to deliver breakthrough success by focusing on user tensions and aligning them with core product values.

Krasi on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/krasi-bozhinkova/

Here is the synopsis of Krasi's Workshop:

In today's hyper-competitive digital landscape, success requires more than understanding user needs—it demands speed, precision, and a bit of luck. Discover how to replace luck with the Critical Need Model, focusing on evolving user needs for enduring product value. Krasi and Ewald will provide actionable insights on prioritizing critical needs, understanding user tensions, and aligning them with core product values.

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Host Bio

Ben is a seasoned expert in product agility coaching, unleashing the potential of people and products. With over a decade of experience, his focus now is product-led growth & agility in organisations of all sizes.

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Transcript

0:00

Welcome to a very special series of episodes of the Product Agility Podcast, broadcasting for two days, direct from Lisbon Portugal and product ties 2024. This year, we're bringing you more exclusive bite-sized wisdom with our Talks in 10 format, where we're going to be diving into actionable insights from some of the best and brightest minds in product leadership. And attendees this year are being spoiled with talks and workshops from the likes of Radakadot, creator of radical product thinking and Rich Morinov, author of the art of product management, helping us all find some joy in what we do. But it would be a pretty shitty conference if it was just two people. There are so many more people here and we're going to be getting as many of them as possible on here to share their talks in 10. Now before we begin, a huge thank you to our sponsor, Sheav Limited. Sheav is a company which has bankrupted this podcast pretty much since day one. I want to take an opportunity just to share with you and make you aware we do some awesome stuff. Whether it's training your product teams or coaching your product teams with clarity and alignment or you know just a simple thing I've actually making OKRs work in organisations, these are all things that we are very good at. So do head over to www.sheav.co.uk, see what we do and get in contact with us. Also check out the show notes for a tasty little discount code over any of our courses. Grab a notebook because the next 10 minutes are going to be packed with action tips from the best in the business. And here begins a talk in 10. It's a lovely and noisy break time here at product is 24 on day three, not day two as I keep saying is day three. I'm here with Krasi who I've seen you around the conference like it was all day yesterday. I saw you, I popped in to the lower after your workshop as well. It's nice to finally have you opposite me to hear a little bit more about your workshop, your really successful workshop I will add that she ran yesterday which was called decoding the secrets of lasting value. How it might not be cool that in the future. So Krasi, thank you very much for coming on to the podcast. Thank you for having me and I'm super happy to be here at the conference. It's my first time by truly enjoying the community, the vibe, the whole energy around. And funny that you say but indeed after the workshop we got really interesting feedback that around the secret of lasting product value. Actually we were disguising breakthrough product success and innovation and this gave us an idea how to read in the future what to go the session but in any case it was fun experience and I hope it helped the participants adopt new ways of thinking to prepare them for what is to come and there is so much uncertainty and change happening that we felt is the right opportunity to experiment and bring something new to the table. Well let's hear a little bit about it I think. I'm sure the listeners would love to hear more about it and the people that were at the conference we didn't get to come along we'd have to learn more about it. So could you tell us a little bit more about what the workshop was about? Yeah absolutely with pleasure. So the premise of the workshop was structured around this concept that we have to understand the of course the customer user needs but also determine what is this what we call a critical need and also have a little bit of anticipation of how this is going to change in the future because to achieve this breakthrough product success we have to be here but also we have to with one eye look into what is to come next and how the changes are going to influence the landscape but also impact the product itself and in the workshop we wanted to make sure that our participants were equipped to think not just about the product but also the connection of the product with the brand and the connection of the product with the adoption because no product or breakthrough success would ever happen unless we overcome these barriers and we truly understand what happens but on an emotional level with the customers and users. And I'd like to share four key takeaways that somehow preempted all this discussion and super co-interaction with the participants and I'll start with one that is probably not what the audience wants to hear but there you go anyway. Yes indeed that perhaps the current thinking around the product is a little bit outdated and requires reset especially if we are aiming to do something a bit more extraordinary beyond incremental growth and what I'm thinking is about breakthroughs so to achieve these breakthroughs in such a fast pace of change we have to step into the unknown place so anything traditional and linear thinking approach to product strategies perhaps not the right approach right now and I would encourage our listeners to think about these aspects of the unmet user needs the unknown pains and the gains anything that is beyond the surface and see what they can uncover in this rich space so that's number one from there it gets a little easier because if you understand this user tensions what is beyond this hidden surface sorry what is beyond the visible into the hidden service you can actually think about and get to this breakthrough value which resides into the intersection of the friction the change between the current habits and this resistance to change and what stops this segment of the target users to adopt the product and solving these tensions actually now our opinion requires more than just solving for problems it encourages us to think on a deeper more emotional level to understand the change and give the users a really good reason to want to change so that's number two number three what appeared that is very real and our hope would help the audience in their work is this idea of the product adoption that the real barriers never really technology it's always psychology so if you can connect and think deeply what are the implications of your product into changing the habits and the beliefs to overcome these biases that users have I think there is a hope that innovation can drive and accelerate much better and more equitable world but then again you have to depart from the point of technology and think something beyond that into the real user world and be truly customer centric and the last idea that I want to leave the audience with is that as a product managers we actually hold a lot of responsibility and there is probably another inconvenient truth that I want to say but there goes again that we maybe our thinking is kind of limiting the innovation in our companies because we ultimately feel prohibitive to expand because we have biases so thinking about consciously thinking and addressing these cognitive biases can be a game changer for any product manager to think are we solving the right problems what happens if there is not enough meaning are we instead looking for the easier way out as opposed to thinking longer term thinking about implications and actually taking responsibility for the consequences of what we launched in the world and with this idea I think if anything the audience would take away is to not be scared to approach the unknown with the right frameworks you'd have the structure and the foundation to take the leap and it's not as scary as it seems especially if you surround yourself with a diverse team of people of trusted partners also think of your customers don't be afraid to bring them in such discussions and I think the results would be awesome I like what you're saying that around the voyaging into the unknown and having a framework for doing that I think the unknown stuff is really quite scary and daunting for people but having a a structure having having a process something which is going to hold you through it at least you know for the maybe the first time we're doing it makes with a lot safer I guess and able to have a bit of comfort in a way we kept asking our participants in the workshop yesterday don't favor the obvious ideas let's look at the outliers let's look at what we don't usually think of but perhaps somebody can come up with and these ideas may hold the key to real breakthrough and innovation so always in the roadmap there should be in the pro crop map there should be a place for these outliers which later if you can connect adults and yeah you can tap into such a rich space for ideas that is in my opinion really interesting to explore then really interesting we had a gentleman on the podcast a few weeks ago called a Gorgou Adjik he's like a bit of a legend written many books and his new book Blizzard Optimization is about basically turning edge cases into success and he was this story about really about him starting his own product number three I think of his products that he's created this was my 9 million active users as of last year and it was all to do with the exponential growth came from finding people who were misusing misusing his products when actually when he looked at what they were doing is about how do I embrace this rather than try and stop them from doing it that was what came from the massive growth of his edge cases those things where there's unknown needs the things that maybe can manifest through the way people use your products is a really awesome way to get good leverage and something you said as well then they were running out of time but I really loved what you said that the barrier was never technology it's always psychology I thought that was a lovely line and that's very good thank you I truly believe about that and I'm quite passionate to make sure that in the product discipline we expand our thinking and we bring creative problem solving we bring deep reasoning we bring other disciplines and capabilities to help us achieve this empathy that in my opinion is going to be a deal breaker really it's the superpower that can help us get to where we want to be and see a better world yeah it's one how many product managers well as a product manager like how often do we use their own products I wonder like actually use it as a day-to-day basis because lots of people I know they they support the product but it isn't something that they would use as part of their day-to-day life and I wonder it actually being the being your own user like is that a barrier or is that a benefit I would imagine it's a benefit but you have to be brave enough and also humble enough to acknowledge that sometimes you don't know and sometimes you make mistakes so always always ask not only why but also why not we use in our work a lot of polarity and a lot of contrast the unusual questions as I said trying to unlearn trying to see the unknown trying to go beyond the obvious because if it's the obvious then everyone else has seen it but the question is what's after and can we have structured approach to get to this place and I do believe with diverse teams and collaborative merits or whether it's a safe space to discuss is possible thanks. Thank you so much for coming I've really enjoyed it I would love to come on next year I'm going to come to productized and I'm going to maybe come for longer and actually try and get to some workshops because every year I get more and more frustrated I never actually get to experience them. You should you should know I know and I know also everybody wants to invite me to any workshops I'm happy to come along and food her running over somewhere else to say but you know it's really awesome and it's so nice to hear you know your insights into it really really interesting if people want to know more about you and what you do or about the workshop is linked in the best place. LinkedIn and also my email it's a very simple crassie at outcome.com outcome is spelled with W it's dense with one with tech so you wouldn't forget but then outcome. Fantastic well thank you so much it's been actually it's just nice to have you here and not seeing you around and everyone thank you so much for listening thank you I truly enjoyed it as well really I hope to see you again hopefully we will I'm sure who knows you know the world's a small place but if you're listening to this I'm in or wherever you might be and you enjoy what we've said we've got questions about it feel free to put it on LinkedIn share let us know like comment your feedback means the world to us and we will happen to help in any way that we can so everyone thank you for listening classy thank you very much coming on thank you we're back again at some point soon thank you thanks