Silicon Valley Product Group

Inspired's first edition buried business viability; the second edition made it a full risk. The 2008 first edition listed only value, usability and feasibility as product risks, with viability buried. Cagan fixed this in the second edition ten years later and now says, "I completely understated the importance of business viability."

Viability means the business can afford to market, sell and service the solution, and that it is legal, compliant, private, safe and ethical. Cagan says his developer-tools career hid the gap, because viability is much simpler there than for most products, and especially than for AI products.

Lenny's Podcast▶ 5:46

Readers took Inspired as only needing empowered teams, not better leadership. The book barely covered product leadership, so many companies set up teams with a strong product manager and expected success. Cagan's correction: "you don't just need less management, you need better management."

At minimum, leaders must provide a product strategy, a prioritized list of problems to solve, to give teams context. He chose to focus on teams and discovery because he loves the craft. Some readers also took the product manager to be "CEO of the product", the opposite of the humility he intended.

Lenny's Podcast▶ 16:43

Structuring Inspired as people, process and product fed the craving for process. Cagan regrets the book's three-part structure because it fed teams' appetite for process, frameworks and predictability as a substitute for thinking. He says he should have stressed thinking and product sense far more loudly.

"I did not appreciate the lengths that people would go to in order to avoid thinking." He now fears LLMs will become another alternative to thinking, as process already is in many companies.

Lenny's Podcast▶ 19:19