AI Product Management

Chapter 4. Developing AI Product Sense Through Teardowns

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“The secret impresses no one. The trick you use it for is everything.”

Alfred Borden (The Prestige)

During my time working at hardware companies like Apple, whenever a competitor launched a new product (like a smart phone), the very next day we would buy it off the shelf, cut it open and try to understand why that manufacturer had made certain engineering decisions. This activity is called a “competitive teardown”. At the time, I remember thinking this seemed horrendously wasteful: we just spent $800 on a Samsung Galaxy XYZ, and now I’m taking a screwdriver to it! But in the process, we learned a great deal more about how products were built and why certain design decisions were made from just thirty minutes with the guts exposed compared to months of external competitive analysis. As a product builder, it was incredibly powerful to see the component choices, the thermal management strategy, the antenna placement - all the product decisions ...