01
If you're new here
Start here for the core mental-model shift: what gets measured, why useful products still fail, how value moves, and why fit is social rather than static.
01 · Start here
Three reading paths through the archive.
If you are new here, start with the first path. If you already know the terrain, enter through the cluster closest to the questions you care about.
02
If you work on social products
For products where users affect each other: interference, community health, context collapse, weak ties, distance, and the architecture of growth.
03
If you lead product teams
For people questioning the assumptions behind PM itself: hidden models, jobs, meaning, ethnography, and why product education keeps missing society.
02 · Browse by topic
Read by lens, not only by date.
Some readers arrive through a question rather than an essay title. These topic paths make the archive easier to enter from the outside.
Value, power, adoption, and strategic choice.
The broadest shelf in the archive, spanning metrics, value flow, friction, power, and social product-market fit.
What people actually do inside social, institutional, and designed systems.
This shelf holds the behavioral spine of the archive: meaning, roles, context, emotional labor, and patterned action.
Networks, interference, distance, and the shape of growth.
The most coherent sequence in the archive for readers trying to understand product decisions through ties, structure, and spillovers.
Framework critique for people building inside organizations.
These essays challenge inherited PM tools and show where they flatten the social world they claim to explain.
Adoption, drop-off, and growth as social process.
A compact shelf that reframes growth away from surface funnels and toward structure, ties, and context.
Edge shelves
Smaller questions, sharper entry points.
For narrower themes that still matter in the archive, but do not need a full featured shelf.
03 · Full archive
All essays, organized by year and month.
For readers who prefer chronology, the full archive stays intact and easy to scan.
2026
April
The Stranger Is a Product Role
On Simmel, distance, and why some of the most valuable product interactions come from people who are near enough to matter and far enough to see clearly.
Design Anthropology for Product TeamsOn ethnography, lived practice, and why product research gets better when it studies worlds instead of only users.
Product-Market Fit Is a Social Process, Not a Static StateOn structuration, feedback loops, and why fit changes as users and products change one another.
Bonding vs. Bridging Is a Product Strategy ChoiceOn network architecture, social capital, and why platforms have to choose what kinds of ties they are optimizing for.
Why PM Education Still Misses SocietyOn the discipline's intellectual inheritance, what its training leaves out, and why product leaders keep rediscovering social problems too late.
March
Products Don't Just Solve Problems. They Organize Power.
On visibility, recourse, governance, and why product decisions quietly determine who gets to act, decide, and be heard.
Why Personas Flatten PeopleOn simplification, stereotype risk, and why teams lose the social world the moment they condense it into one fictional user.
Jobs to Be Done Has a Sociology ProblemOn progress, power, and why a useful framework still misses the social structure around the job.
Meaning Is Made, Not DesignedOn symbolic interaction, product meaning, and why users decide what your feature means after you ship it.
February
Weak Ties Are a Growth Strategy
On bridging connections, network structure, and why growth often comes from people who are not especially close.
Rating Systems Extract Emotional LaborOn five-star systems, service performance, and how rating mechanics turn emotion into product infrastructure.
Thoughtful Friction Is Good Product DesignOn bias interruption, social regulation, and why some of the best product decisions add friction rather than remove it.
January
Why A/B Testing Breaks on Social Products
On connected users, network interference, and why experiments fail when people affect one another.
Community Health Is Product HealthOn norms, moderation, and why community breakdown is a product failure before it becomes a trust crisis.
Context Collapse Is a Product FailureOn Facebook, audience design, and why people stop sharing when too many social worlds collapse into one stage.
2025
December
The Product Funnel Starts Too Late
Why the decisive adoption drop-offs often happen before action, not inside onboarding.
Value Flow Is Product Strategy, Not Just EthicsOn who creates value, who captures it, and who quietly pays for it.
Product Management Has an Individualistic OntologyOn the hidden model of the user inside product management.
November
Teaching Leadership: What 120 First-Years Taught Me
I was selected to design and teach a full-credit leadership course to 120 first-year MBA students. I thought I was there to teach. I wasn't.
On Education, Transformation, and What Davos Got RightIn 2020, I was invited to Davos to discuss Education for Transformation. What I found there surprised me.
Why Useful Products Still FailOn the adoption trap, social risk, and why useful is not the same as adoptable.