3-Bullet Thursday – 11/11/2021
Defining context and content-driven networks in consumer social, the business value of design, and building community-first companies.
Each Thursday I write an email about the 3 most interesting people and product development things I’ve found. Sign up below to have it sent straight to you.
Hi friends 👋
I hope you find these as interesting as I did!
Consumer Social: Context, or Content Driven?
Justine’s thread makes an interesting distinction between context and content driven consumer social products.
Content network = the content is engaging on its own - you don't need to know the people involved. Reddit is a great example. I regularly spend hours on the app browsing posts, despite the fact that I have no connection to posters. The stories draw me in!
Context network = the content is only interesting if you know the people involved. FB is a prime example. Do you care about a stranger's vacation pics? Probably not. But you'll likely flip through photos that your friend or colleague posted.
What’s particularly interesting is that the metrics you should be prioritising are very different for each scenario.
The Business Value of Design
McKinsey set out to discover the true value of design.
We tracked the design practices of 300 publicly listed companies over a five-year period in multiple countries and industries. Their senior business and design leaders were interviewed or surveyed. Our team collected more than two million pieces of financial data and recorded more than 100,000 design actions.
What they discovered was that:
Companies who ranked in the top quartile in the McKinsey Design Index (MDI) grew their revenue 32% more than benchmarked companies over a 5 year period.
This held true across multiple industries and sectors.
There were marginal differences between the other quartiles – “the market disproportionately rewarded companies that truly stood out from the crowd.”
Community-First Company Building
This is another podcast that got my mind racing.
More and more I’m hearing about teams and startups that build communities before they ever build a product. Instead, their products are built with, and often within, their community, many of whom support #buildinginpublic.
One example from the podcast highlighted how easy it was to get started with a community: simply set up a Discord channel. By including your future users from the very start you’re more likely to “build what something want,” as Y Combinator would say.