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EVERGENCES / IDEAS IN MOTION

Videos

Short videos from Sean Everett on AI, customer discovery, product design and growth. Watch a clip, explore its ideas and read the transcript.

33 videos

AI Chatbot Checkbox

An AI chatbot can become a purchasing checkbox rather than a differentiator. Sean discusses the distinction between a common feature and a distinctive customer capability.

Tools Change, Outcomes Remain

A house-building analogy separates changing tools from the outcome a customer still needs. AI is considered as a tool for delivering that outcome.

Product & Design

Give Customers a Superpower

What useful new capability could make a customer’s life faster, better, easier or cheaper? Sean asks how a product could create meaningful customer value.

Pay for Outcomes

A service buyer may value closed-won customers over leads at the top of a funnel. Sean distinguishes an outcome from an intermediate activity.

Customer Discovery

Discovery Is Not a Pitch

Customer discovery is a listening exercise. Start with understanding rather than selling.

Product & Design

Let the Technology Disappear

Technology should support the human experience. Adding a feature is only useful when the experience gets better.

Product & Design

What Can Only You Build Together

A useful partnership question: what can we create together that neither of us could create alone?

Choose Execute Review

Choose the task, check that the tool can do it, then review the result. Execution is only part of the workflow.

Purpose Meets Customer Value

Start with work that matters to you, then ask what value someone else would pay for.

Learn Where the Potholes Are

Trying, failing and learning can improve the next attempt. Experience matters when tools change quickly.

Customer Discovery

Follow the Thread

Ask about a real problem. Listen to the answer. Then follow the thread with a useful question.

Customer Discovery

How Are Decisions Made

How are decisions made? Who decides, how long does it take, and what evidence matters?

Can You Do It Again

The test of a capability: can you deliver it again, consistently, over time?

Internal and Customer Facing AI

Separate internal workflow improvements from the experience your customer sees. Both deserve a deliberate decision.

Your Combination of Skills

Individual skills can look ordinary. The useful combination you build over time can be much more distinctive.

AI as a Creative Partner

There are only so many hours in a day. Think about the help that would actually support what you are trying to create.

Product & Design

Imagine the Useful Thing

A design exercise: put the constraints aside briefly and imagine one useful thing that would make daily life easier.

Product & Design

Different Layers Different Speeds

A house is a useful way to picture pace layers: the frame, the walls, the furniture and daily life change on different schedules.

Product & Design

Values Include Consequences

Building something helpful also means thinking about its second- and third-order consequences.

Customer Discovery

Separate Opinion and Evidence

Separate the opinion from its underlying principles and evidence. Ask what another person could independently check.

Grow the Pie

An ecosystem can create value beyond a fight over the same customer. What could grow the pie?

Put the Decision in the Middle

Put the decision in the middle. Test the idea together rather than treating disagreement as a personal attack.

Customer Discovery

Ask Why They Choose

Ask what customers keep choosing, then ask why. The reasoning behind a preference can be more useful than the preference alone.

Product & Design

Ideas You Can Move

A design thought experiment: what if ideas and AI architectures could be manipulated like physical objects?

The Work Between Wanting and Getting

An outcome often depends on more than one tool: people, communication, purchases and coordination. Where can you reduce that work?

Product & Design

Some Layers Should Change Slowly

Before rebuilding a system, distinguish its durable structure from its faster-changing layers.

Tools Are Not the Mission

AI, robotics and other technologies are tools. Which mission are they serving?

Fascination Sustains the Work

If you will work on a problem for years, what keeps you drawn to it? Start with a fascination that can sustain the work.

Product & Design

Escape the Feature Copying Loop

Once baseline requirements are met, avoid an endless feature-copying loop. What is the larger strategic choice?

The Decisions Your AI Inherits

When decision principles are encoded into software, their effects reach customers. Be deliberate about what you encode.

Map the Use Case Before the Code

An AI use case needs more than code: define the behaviour you want, then check the result.

Customer Discovery

Ask for the Reasoning

Ask which principles support a claim, then ask for the evidence.

Growth Needs More Than Maintenance

Keeping the business running and improving it are different jobs. Growth asks for investment in product, service and customer experience.