Learn, Make, Learn

Should Products be Political?

• Ernest Kim, Joachim Groeger • Season 1 • Episode 12

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Ernest:

Hello and welcome to Learn Make Learn where we share qualitative and quantitative perspectives on products to help you make better. My name is Ernest Kim and I'm joined by my friend and co host Joachim Groeger. Hey Joachim, how's it going?

Joachim:

I'm doing well, Ernest. I don't think there's any big eventful thing going on right now. No one's ill. Everyone's doing fine. No, actually, scratch that. I just realized. Last week, there was a lice outbreak. In my middle child school, we just said, we're not going to get involved in this whole thing. We just kept him at home

Ernest:

oh,

Joachim:

he's small enough. So it's not a big deal. But that was the way we could avoid lice. Otherwise, I would have been talking to you while scratching my head and hoping that it wasn't lice. But thankfully, it's not. How about you have, how is your house drama doing? let's get into that.

Ernest:

Oh, it's, uh, it's, it's ongoing. We're still waiting to get the, uh, skylight fixed that we talked about the last time that our, one of our skylights was shattered by a falling tree limb. So, uh, still hoping to get that fixed this week, fingers crossed, uh, but yeah, TBD on that. All right. is episode 12 and today our topic is should products be political? And we'll dive into that in great detail in just a minute, but let's start with some follow ups to our previous episode, Scenius or Genius. Joachim, do you have any follow ups to share?

Joachim:

I have a quick one. I'm still kicking myself. I didn't mention it last time since everything was about the phrase seniors and it's from Brian Eno. I've completely failed to mention that there is a Brian Eno documentary that is, making the rounds right now in cinemas. and it's getting screened very slowly in select cinemas because the experience is very unique. So it's a documentary film made by Gary Hustwood. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. He is famous for having done a documentary on the typeface Helvetica. And then he was, he continued making a trilogy of documentaries, including Objectified, Urbanized. And then he did a documentary about Dieter Rams. And now he's done a documentary about Brian Eno. And this documentary is a generative documentary, he lets some kind of algorithm in the background, reassemble the footage in different ways so that each audience that sees it in one city versus another city will be experiencing a different documentary film. and it's super experimental, super exciting, taps right back into the generative work that Brian Eno had been doing. I put that out there as look up screenings for that, because it's city by city, so if you're in a, in the right spot at the right time, you might be able to catch it and have a totally unique experience from anyone else watching it in the cinemas. How about you, Ernest? What's your follow up this week? Oh, should I? Oh, sorry. Did you

Ernest:

no, no, no, no, no,

Joachim:

to add to that?

Ernest:

no, I just, that's a, I think that's a fantastic one. Do you happen to know the title of the movie?

Joachim:

It is called Eno.

Ernest:

Oh, okay.

Joachim:

pure and simple.

Ernest:

I hope it's going to show in my area. I'd really love to see it. I actually wanted to go back a little bit and share a follow up to our second episode, which was titled Apple Vision Pros and Cons. And that was our discussion of, the Apple Vision Pro, but it was really focused on the broader concept of spatial computing. And my follow up to that is a blog post by a person named Hugo Barra, who led VR at Meta from 2017 through 2020. he was a product VP at Xiaomi before that and held high level product management roles in Google's Android group before that. So Barra is someone who, Definitely knows a thing or two about product management and about consumer electronics and about VR. And in this blog post, he shares his unvarnished opinion on Apple vision pro, including many fascinating nuggets that only someone with an insider's perspective on consumer VR products could offer. And I also found Barra's post interesting because it's written from the perspective of a product manager. So if you want to see how a high level product manager thinks and articulates their ideas, his post is a great read. Um, and it's worth noting that. But Barra no longer works in the VR space. He's currently the CEO of a health tech startup. And I didn't get the sense that he was holding anything back in his assessment of Apple vision pro or in his takes on how Meta's quest and quest pro devices compare to vision pro. So it's, I think a really unique perspective. It is a long post, but I found it really enlightening and easy to read. And, uh, we'll include a link to that in the show notes.

Joachim:

ha. You're building tension, you know, telling us where he comes down and that we have to read it ourselves to see if he's, uh, a fanboy or not.

Ernest:

Yeah, I think it's, good to not give anything away. And it's A pretty nuanced perspective, you know, which I think, um, isn't a shocker when you realize that he is somebody who is has experience doing this. So I think he sees a lot of the shades of gray, you know, it's not just black and white for him. So, um, I think folks who are interested in product and making products will find a lot, uh, of interest in this piece All right, well, now let's get on to our main topic. Um, I don't think anyone listening in the U. S. needs to be reminded that 2024 is a presidential election year here in the States. Uh, which means that politics, which is always a hot topic, is just getting ready to boil over, especially online. And so this led us to wonder, should products be political? and uh, as I mentioned in last week's episode, we haven't discussed our perspectives on this in advance. So Joachim, I'd love to hear your take on this. I'm dying to hear what you think. Should products ever be political?

Joachim:

Where do you start? So I, There's a perspective out there that says design is political, just straightforwardly. Of course it is. and I'm going to lean on Herb Simon, who is the founding father of computer science, artificial intelligence, By training, actually, I think he was, well, he did work in economics as well. But he wrote this book, The Sciences of the Artificial, and he has this tidbit that I thought was quite, compelling and useful for this conversation. He says, Everyone designs, who devises, courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones. The intellectual activity that produces material artifacts is no different fundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or the one that devises a new sales plan for a company or a social welfare policy for a state. So, he's just calling. Everything design and everything that's designed is shaping choices and behaviors. And if you're doing that, then you can take the next step to saying, well, you're shaping behavior decisions. And he mentions explicitly social welfare policy for a state. You're immediately getting into the political domain. You are shaping how people. behave. Um, and that is a version of politics. So that's how I'm, I've been framing it in my mind as design and product innovation. These products shape human interactions and behaviors, and therefore they are inherently political. But then I was thinking about inherently political. That phrase also is, seems funky to me because If we dig up artifacts from way back when and we look at these objects, they don't transmit the political situation in which they were created at all. You need context, you need to understand that you need other evidence that tells you this represents something to this person and their standing in society was here and this is how the society was organized and therefore this product has meaning in this way. anything that's shaping human behavior and human decision making is political. the objects that we're designing have that facet, but it's within the context that they operate in that they have their full weight of their political power. The starting point and then just brief excursion kind of referencing our discussion last week where we're talking about Braun. Braun and Dieter Rams, of course, from the old school, ULM, that is a place that design school was heavily, heavily influenced by Bauhaus. And Bauhaus was a design school that had a very explicit political motivation for its designs. the notion of minimalism and cleanliness and rational design. The motivating factor behind all of that was to create products that could be mass produced. And they wanted people to have access to these straightforward products so they could improve their lives. And a lot of their projects involved responding to, um, social needs, housing that could be produced quickly, efficiently, and worked for everyone. Furniture that could be mass produced and accessed by everyone, and it would be well designed. So there's a strong political dimension to it. But when you then take those products to today, and you just look at them, we just look at them as pretty objects, they've lost that revolutionary, subversive, political power, unless you pick up the books, you read the writing, and you see the context again. So, those guys were very explicit that they wanted to reshape society. And a lot of them then went off and did that, right? They designed cities and, and all kinds of stuff that altered the way people operated. I mean, Brasilia is a perfect example of what happens when the Baha school gets to design a whole city and Truly how awful it is, it's just, it's a terrible place. Allegedly just awful. I'm really wrestling with this one because I, I get, I, I get that when we are making products or we're making decisions, we are shaping human behavior, but we're doing that in the context that we're living in. And so, um, it's tricky, right? You feel like your impact is quite ephemeral in some ways when you're thinking about what are the political implications of what you're doing. Um, and then, you know, some things seem to me timeless and very obvious. So if I'm working at a social media company and we're just mining all this data from people and we're storing it and tracking everything and start crossing over into tracking behaviors that our users are not aware that they are tracking. I don't say mean our users, anyone that I know of, I'm just saying ours in the general sense. then you're crossing over into the political, then it becomes a system of control. And then that gets a bit tricky, doesn't it? So that was a very, that's how I feel about it. It's very open. Uh, and so now I'm very curious to, to just see where you're standing on all of this on. It's like, what's the angle that you've been coming from? Because as you said, we have not discussed this ahead of time. So we're just really in, in our little echo chambers and now we're going to connect them together and see what comes out.

Ernest:

Yeah, I love that you had proposed this topic because, not only is it timely, I think it is just a really great opportunity for us to just put our own thinking out there and bounce off of each other. And I think it's worth, too, making a distinction between a brand making political statements products being political, because I think it's very easy for a brand to put out, especially nowadays, put out political statements on social media. So I don't think that's what we're talking about. I think we're talking more about product creation and, you know, should, uh, you endeavor as a person, a group of people making a product to imbue that product with political perspectives and. I very much come at this from the perspective that you articulated that comes from Herb Simon. You know, my take on this has been that the best, most innovative products are always progressive, you know, not progressive with a capital P as in represented, representing the progressive party, but progressive with a lowercase p in that innovative products are, I think, in my experience, the product of people who in one way or another imagine a better future, you know, what is the definition of progressive? It's to move forward, to advance the world forward in some way. And that's the goal of every, every project. Innovator that I've encountered, whether or not they even call themselves an innovator, you know, people who tend to innovate and make innovative products are people who tend to want to move things forward in some way to improve the current state of the world in some way. So I think to that extent, the best products are just innately imbued with a political perspective in that they're progressive. It's just that it might not be You know, about political parties. Um, now one example that came to mind when you raised this topic was. in the footwear world, which is, you know, a world that I have a lot of experience in. But, there's a sort of infamous example, which involves Michael Jordan. and I think to explain this, I have to provide a little bit of context here. Michael Jordan grew up with, And went to university in North Carolina, and I think his family continues to live there. and in 1990, the state's long time arch conservative senator named Jesse Helms, Jesse Helms, sorry, uh, was up for reelection and for the first time really faced a challenge. And, for context here, Helms had. called the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress. And he was essentially, he was an open racist. Um, and he was up against someone named Harvey Gantt, who had been mayor of, uh, North Carolina's biggest city, Charlotte, and was at the time trying to become the Senate's only black member. And So at the time, many had hoped that Michael Jordan would come out and endorse Gantt and support his campaign, but Jordan didn't. And um, Helms went on to win that election over Gant by a pretty slim margin. I think it was something like 52 point something to 47 point something. So it's pretty close race. And then a few years later in a book written by a sports writer named Sam Smith, who wrote This book called the Jordan Rules that was very famous, uh, but he wrote a follow up book, um, and in that he noted that the reason Jordan didn't back Gantt was that, uh, in Jordan's supposed words, Republicans buy shoes too, and for, for decades, that was considered hearsay because at the time, the, uh, author Sam Smith had said that this was something that Jordan had said to a friend, uh, Uh, so it wasn't something either directly and, but it had really kind of dogged Jordan for a long time. And then in the, um, really I thought excellent ESPN documentary titled The Last Dance that aired in 2020 and is now available on Netflix, Jordan finally acknowledged that he did actually say that he did say that Republicans buy shoes too, and that's why he didn't backant. Um, In the documentary, Jordan went on to say, uh, that, um, you know, I'm quoting him here. I don't think that statement needs to be corrected because I said it in jest on a bus, unquote. But then he went on to say, uh, again, I'm quoting Jordan here. I never thought of myself as an activist. I thought of myself as a basketball player. I wasn't a politician. I was, I was playing my sport. I was focused on my craft. Was that selfish? Probably, but that was my energy unquote.

Joachim:

Hmm. Interesting. Wow.

Ernest:

yeah, so, he made a political decision and yet the, wildly popular products that bore his name in that era were absolutely unapologetically progressive. So, again, for context here, for folks who aren't sneakerheads. This was, the 1990 Senate race we're talking about. And 1990 was the year that the Air Jordan V was released, and uh, you know, it, it was absolutely groundbreaking, was absolutely progressive. you know, you make the great point that Looking back on products, the, the, any political sentiment is lost, but I, I like to believe that these really innovative, progressive products, even if people don't, um, overtly understand the underlying politics, that it still rubs off on them in some way. That, You can't see and experience these sorts of products like products that came out of the Bauhaus and even if you don't explicitly get the message, it still changes you in some way, I believe, at least I like to believe, and that it's a little bit of roundabout, but it also reminds me of, The great Spike Lee film, Do the Right Thing, from 1989. And, if you haven't seen it, you know, you have to see it. It's an amazing film, but there's this incredible scene where Spike Lee, who plays a character called Mookie, is interacting with a character, a white character named Pino, who's played by John Turturro. And in it, it, Turturro's character Pinot is a, very openly racist character, but they have this great exchange where Mki says, points out that, Hey, Pinot, who's your favorite basketball player? And he says, magic Johnson. And then he says, Mook, uh, MKI says, well, who's your favorite movie star? And Pinot replies, Eddie Murphy and Mki says, who's your favorite? Musician, and Pino replies, Prince, or, um, basically Mookie pulls it out of him that Prince is his favorite musician. So even though Totoro's character, Pino, is still a racist character, and obviously this is fiction, but I do think that these things change you, and maybe it takes some time for these, for those changes to reach their, uh, logical conclusion. But maybe Pino as a character hadn't been changed yet, but I think over time, the exposure to these things changes you in a way that they wouldn't have if you didn't experience them. So I guess maybe it's a long winded way of me is, for me to say that I think it was a benefit that more people, including those white folks got exposed to products like their Jordan 5. Because I do think that these products that are imbued with this progressive mindset, this progressive attitude, do change things and change people's minds over the long term. And so I'd rather people be exposed to those types of products than not, I guess, if that makes any sense.

Joachim:

It does, Ernest. It's just another form of that respect that I was alluding to as well, is that you are making stuff that shifts a behavior, and it shouldn't be taken lightly, right? I don't think we're hiding the fact that we're kind of progressively minded individuals at this point. It's interesting. I wasn't expecting you to kind of go this way because your starting point was this very disappointing moment in Michael Jordan's, engagement with politics. And the same year that he fails to take a clear stand, he doesn't alienate anyone. And therefore his shoe gets to have the broadest possible audience. And then the logic is they're experiencing something that is different and potentially subversive and these small exposures are something that are gonna shift the way a person thinks overall. Yeah, I think there's something in there. There's something about that that I find quite intriguing when, the ugly sneaker phase of Balenciaga was coming out, it was very subversive and strange. Uh, in a s in a small, very fashion focused way, I want to say, not in a full blown political statement it was quite repellent for a lot of people, right? It just didn't make sense. And then that exposure and having seen it moves the goalposts and then this kind of Ugly sneaker phase becomes, everyone's going to have an ugly sneaker now. There's something about, definitely going to the extreme of something. And then that setting up a conversation that would not have happened otherwise. And I think that's related to basically, people being able to show possible worlds of what is possible. Coming right back to episode one, I think we talked about Ursula Gwynne, you had the Reference to one of her works that was your recommendation for the week and then a discussion, of her National Book Award prize, where she

Ernest:

Right.

Joachim:

different worlds and the ability to imagine different worlds. I think Tesla is a good example of someone taking a very specific stand on what they think the future looks like. The future is electric cars and Quite an individualistic perspective on the world. An alternative would have been Tesla, be a electric bus company, and they designed the best electric bus. Damn electric buses for public transit, and then they start lobbying cities and manipulating cities and they're going to reshape how our cities operate as, public transit driven entities

Ernest:

you know that you mentioned Tesla and that reminds me of, a really interesting interview. I heard a lot of, I can't remember off the top of my head where, which podcast this was up. We'll track it down and include it in the show notes, but a lot of people forget that Tesla was not started by Elon Musk. It was acquired by him. It was actually started by two guys who had. made it big, pretty big in, um, the digital space. And, had a lot of money to spend and we're very interested in more sustainable ways to get around. And so, I forget when this was, but this was some time ago and they, And, they were interested in cars, so they wanted to have a good driving experience, but without the environmental impact of a internal combustion car. And they looked and they found that there weren't any good options, What they concluded was that the only people at that point making electric cars were people who hated cars. And,, so you saw that in the vehicles that were available. They were all, I think the language they use was something like they were like penalty boxes. They were just cars for people who just didn't want you to drive. And, and so consequently, no one bought electric cars. And so they. Then took it upon themselves to make electric cars for people who actually want, who enjoy driving and want to drive, but want to reduce their environmental footprint. So, and then, so it went on and a long acquired the company and push them out. And the rest is history, but I think that's an example where. Politics got in the way of making a good product and I would argue got in the way of having a net positive effect on the environment because like these folks, these two guys said they, they found that the marketplace was occupied by these products that were made by people, whose politics led them to make really bad products, really bad cars. And I think you can have this argument of, Oh, okay. Should anyone have a car? Should we all be taking public transit? But, you know, in terms of the reality of the United States at the very least, that's public transit for all is just not something that's realistically available to everybody. So given that, could we at least help people reduce their impact and offer something that gives them the things that they want from a car while significantly reducing their impact on the environment. that's a case where I think the politics gets in the way. You could insert anything there. It could be politics. It could be, bottom line driven thinking, anything that gets in the way of creating a great product is a negative. Um, and I think if you put that insert thing here ahead of the needs of your customers, you're likely to end up with a bad product, which is something we've talked about in the past as well. But you know, I see no reason why Politics would necessarily lead to a bad product. Like, example would be Patagonia, which is a company that very much wears its politics on its sleeve. it informs everything that they do from their brand messaging to the products that they make and how they make them. And, I think it, it's helped them to make great products and to really stand out in a crowded marketplace. And let them to create this whole new way of, the way the business itself is structured, which is something we've talked about in past episodes as well. uh, you know, I wouldn't want anyone to take anything we've said to suggest that we think, uh, a company driven by politics is, default de facto, going to be an unsuccessful company. I don't think that's the case at all, but I think what helps Patagonia is that their politics are also fundamentally progressive. And like we've talked about, I think all in my experience, all. of the best, most innovative products are fundamentally progressive. I think where you'd be challenged is if your products, if your politics are regressive, um, I think that you'd be challenged there to find a way to make successful products that are also regressive. They might work for a little while. One example that comes to mind, there are these atrocious. gigantic trucks and SUVs where you literally need a forward facing camera so that you don't run over little kids because they're below your sightline. Those sorts of products are out there and there are people buying them, but I think that very quickly they're going to, no longer exist. You know, I I think it's a pretty short term phenomenon. So, you can have short term success with things like this, but I don't think that that regressive sort of products historically, I can't think of very many examples of regressive products that have had a long uh, shelf life. I guess that would just be more evidence from my perspective that it's about being progressive and about wanting to create a better future, for your customers. Or even if it's, even if you're making it for yourself, it's just about that desire to create a better future.

Joachim:

Kind of getting back to a heuristic or a thing that grounds the discussion, I feel the essence of what we're both trying to get at is there are hard constraints that we can't overcome. when you're innovating, you take that stuff seriously. So you respect the fact that there are a finite number of resources. There's only so much lithium. There's only so many hours in the day that we can do things. If you ignore these really basic constraints on you,, where is the incentive to innovate? It just becomes very, easy to just go to a, uh, for lack of better phrase, lowest common denominator, the lowest energy, highest quick return, approach to the problem. I mean, something as simple as understanding that there are only so many hours in a day that a person has. would really discipline even entertainment, something that we see as so harmless. But the decision as a studio to constantly churn out stuff You are not respecting the constraints that operate on your customer base because it cannot be 15 TV shows, 20 movies, all in one year, full blast across, every possible, franchise that you own. And so being unconstrained you don't have that hard conversation with each other where you say, do we really need to have another series that explains some filler or some inconsistency or plot loophole that was from the 70s? You know, maybe we don't need to fill it in, you know, we don't need to do that. It's going to be cool. Don't worry about it, you know. Maybe that's kind of the essential thing is that Being really attuned to the real constraints that you face means that you will have to face trade offs. You will think carefully about those choices and you will understand that it isn't all limitless

Ernest:

Well, actually, I think your point about streaming is really interesting in that I think sometimes people might think that a discussion like this is very abstract and, pie in the sky, but I think the streaming point is a really good one in that it shows that it does, these sorts of conversations do have a Very real ramifications in terms of business outcomes. So like you mentioned, it was like everyone and their brother and sister thought, let's start a new streaming service and let's just, everyone make a gazillion shows, but now we're seeing that there just aren't enough hours in the day to do that. That's just not a reality. and as a consequence, you're seeing. Like say Max, canceling or destroying movies that have been made, just because they don't have the capacity to show them, they need to take the tax break or, other streaming services that are on the verge of shutting down just because there aren't enough hours in the day, there aren't enough people, uh, eyeballs out there to watch this stuff. So if you. had taken that perspective, and understood that reality at the outset, you would have come to a different strategy. And interestingly, there is a case study here of one studio that did take a different tack, which is Sony. I don't know that they did it. intentionally, but they made the decision to not start a streaming platform. And that's been very successful for them because they've been able to retain that classic model of you produce a movie. It's in theaters for a certain amount of time, and then you license it out to different platforms for a certain amount of time. And, that's a very profitable model. maybe you wouldn't have as, you know, the profits wouldn't be quite as big if you were able to develop a hugely successful streaming platform, the likelihood of that happening is very low. And consequently, they didn't have that huge cash outlay that all these other players, um, had to put out there to start their streaming platform. So, there are really, very, concrete, ramifications that come from this sort of thinking, So I, you know, I think there's a grounding to it. if we thought about for the folks making products on a day to day basis, what advice might we have for them? I don't know, Do you have any thoughts on that, Joachim? Like, how would you translate this day to day?

Joachim:

The discussion around the streaming thing is really, a good framing device for this because, I think if you're in a business and you really Illuminate exactly what your constraints are. In a most unromantic way possible. If you dispassionately actually look at those constraints and ask yourself, you know, is this something that is worth doing, worth continuing doing, or should we rethink it from the ground up? I think you'll find some surprising answers. And so, we don't know how Sony decided but if I was advising some of these people I would really hone in on those constraints. And, one of them is the time constraint there's only so many hours in a day that a person will dedicate to consumption of, of media. And also we should be asking, this is the kind of the other political aspect, the value question. Should I be taking that time away from those people? Or is there something else that I can do that. makes them see the value in what I'm bringing, as opposed to just my constant presence is something that will make them want to stay with me. my absence gives them space, which then allows them to come back and consume something with value and have a much longer lifeline with me. So I'm talking very abstractly here, but let's think about the streaming one as a really precise thing. Streaming is a highly physical business. The idea that video is all zeros and ones and it's just floating up there in the cloud, I'd already alluded to the fact that the cloud is a total misnomer. These are server centers. This is computers, racks and racks of computers. And not only that you need to have a content delivery network, meaning you need to have servers that sit close to your customers, because if they're not close to your customers, you can't get the content to them fast enough. So that physical constraint of just, I need to ship bits across fiber optic. That's a physical process. I'm really moving things through cables. So I want to be close to my customers. So I need to have racks at the ISPs and I need to negotiate with them to have my racks in there. And then I have to go through the complicated math, which is something that Netflix has worked really hard on is how do I populate those content delivery servers with the right pieces of content so that people can just get it instantaneously. So that hard physical constraint, If I was asked, you know, to think about, should we start a streaming service? Do you realize that that's what's happening? You need to be physically close to people. This is like setting up a physical store and you need, there's only so much rack space and there's only so much, cable that can get you close to those people. What's going to happen? You're going to start competing and guess who's going to be extracting from it's the ISPs because they're the monopolists. So, do you want to get into that battle, or do you want to let someone else figure that out, while you do what you know how to do, which is, as a studio, make movies, and then negotiate hard, get licensing agreements, the streaming thing is a really interesting world because it is a physical business, but we really don't think of it that way. so that was a long excursion into just illuminating the real constraints that operate on a business like that. And I think in that, then you would already start saying, do we want to get into this game? And do we have the expertise? Do we want to build that expertise? And then, what is the physical impact that we're putting onto this world? We're just going to duplicate catalogs across racks that are sitting there pushing content more. And then we're competing for that hard constraint of time that people have. And it gets very unromantic, right, because it's not the person who has that, what was it that you said last time was the red flag, like these pithy, you don't want to be the

Ernest:

you don't want to be

Joachim:

you want to be the first bird or

Ernest:

exactly.

Joachim:

these kind of buzzy, dumb, analogies or images that have zero real content around them. This is just really boring, fundamental thinking, that will focus the mind on exactly what it is that you're doing. Maybe that's what it is. Illuminate the constraints and be really honest with yourself what those constraints look like. And then, given those constraints, come back to our favorite thing. Do you think you have a way of actually meeting the consumer in exactly the right spot, given that you know the full picture of the constraints that are operating on You? What about you, Ernest? What is the, how do you approach it? How do you think about any of this?

Ernest:

Yeah, I know this is going to sound like a massive oversimplification, but I guess my advice would be to really focus on your outcome. And, drive your process in a way that will get you to that outcome, knowing that maybe it has to happen incrementally. That maybe you're not going to get to that end state overnight, don't let your politics get in the way of the outcome you're trying to deliver on. A Steve Jobs ism that I'm reminded of here is, I think I referenced this in the past where he said, I don't care about being right, I just care about success. You know, and, and, and as a consequence, what he said was, I would be willing to change my mind. know, if someone came to me with a better argument, a better point of view. You know, point of view, I would change my mind because I wanted to get to that successful outcome. So, um, I know that that could be difficult. You know, I think people are really passionate about their politics, about their perspectives, but It's kind of a, uh, cutting off your nose to spite your face situation, right? Cause if you're quote unquote right in your politics, but you end up with a product that no one buys and no one experiences, what have you achieved? Right. It's goes back to that. Tesla example as well, where all these people making these electric cars that no one wanted, you know, hey, they delivered on their politics, but they made these products that no one wanted. So what did you actually achieve? So, um, I, that would be my advice to folks, you know, that outcome. Know that thing you want to get to. The buzzword y way to say it would be North Star. I kind of hate that expression. so I would just say, know the thing that you really want to get to That outcome you want to deliver on. And then, um, find a way to get there through great products that, you know, people are going to want to buy into. Um, and I think your, the point you made early on is a great one, which is that, you know, a decade from now, no one's going to know what your politics were, but they'll know whether that was a great product or not. Right. so, it, I know, and again, I know that's tough. It's a lot easier said than done, but um, especially for young folks, I think that's an important thing to, to take on board is recognizing that you you ultimately have to make a great product or else no one's going to buy into it.

Joachim:

I think it also comes back to, know your limits as an innovator. Maybe it's something else that you should be focusing on. I think maybe that's where the political ambition and your skill set have to, to line up in the right spot, right? If it's something that you're not, or it's not the right venue, right? A Marvel movie is maybe not the place to start doing it. Although, I will say that, Ryan Coogler did a very good job with Black Panther. That is a perfect example of everything lining up really beautifully for that. But if there's a mismatch, as you said, you're just doing a disservice to everything at the same time, and nothing comes out of it, which is just very, very sad. Your ambition to fix things should be matched with the area that you want to work in. Maybe it is, again, an illumination of the constraints of what you're operating in. You are in the, in the big studio system, and therefore, how can you. within that really, really focused constraint, be subversive and get what you want throughout at the end of it. And then if there is no way, maybe you need to take a deep breath and move to Europe and do it there where small cinema still thrives.

Ernest:

To your point about kind of knowing your constraints too, I'd say coming back to that example of the people making terrible electric cars, I think a great way to channel their energy would have been to make electric bikes. If you hate cars, don't make an electric car, you know, right? Make an electric bike, find a way to channel it in a zone that is more likely to be successful.

Joachim:

Um, actually just a brief excursion into another historical example of where the lineup between politics and, product innovation go hand in hand. I was listening to an interview with someone who mentioned a British plan called the Lucas plan, which was made by the workers at Lucas Aerospace. Lucas Aerospace was a defense contractor in the UK for, yeah, for a good chunk of time. And I think in the seventies, they were facing major headwinds. They made fighter jet parts and missile parts. So pure war machine type stuff. and. The government at the time said, we're not going to bail you out. You need to figure out how to restructure your company. Management was quite open to being nationalized because it would have maintained. the integrity of the company structure as it was, so they would have not been out of the job, but they would have had safe haven under government control. the workers though, I mean, they were unionized. So just whatever you think about unions, just put that aside for a second. These people got together and they actually formed a plan of how to pivot this company. That was aligned with where these workers wanted the company to go. So part of the plan was pretty subversive, which is they wanted to make sure the company was owned by the employees. But the other bit that was even more subversive they provided detailed, incredibly designs and business plans and business strategies for totally new product lines that they wanted the company to build. And they had done this with the cooperation of everyone, not the upper management, but the engineers, the shop workers, the machinists, everyone was feeding into this. And their proposal involved incredible things. because they worked on, um, generating energy on fighter jets, they knew about turbines. we know how to generate electricity from rotational energy. So let's make wind turbines. they had designs for heat pumps, hybrid vehicles. They knew how batteries and internal combustion engines could play nicely together. So they designed Those from the ground up. So this plan had detailed blueprints, as well as the economics of how that would play out. And because everyone had pitched in, they completely understood how this would go from the machinists all the way up. So that was, that's the beautiful unification of the politics, gathering all of that know how. putting it together, and just making a super, super compelling case for what this company could do in the future. Of course, management found it way too subversive. So they fired the leaders of the people that effort. And this plan has just kind of entered the mythology of what could happen, what potential could have been achieved if they had been listened to because they were well ahead of their time. Really, really impressive. and in fact, there is a documentary film, that we can link to in the show notes that is a 30 minute summary of the whole thing. It's actually a three hour documentary, which is on the archive. org, which we'll also link to. I have not made it through the full three hours. But. the 30 minute one I've done, and I've read, read a little about the plan, but it's a really fascinating example of people understanding the hard constraints that they're operating under, the specialization that they have, the political view that they wanted to bring to bear, and the way the products then flow from that and their expertise. And it was super political. It was super subversive, telling management of a weapons company to say, we're done with this. We don't want to do this anymore. And this is what the future of the company looks like. Incredible. Absolutely incredible.

Ernest:

Wow, that's an amazing example. I'm definitely going to check out the video. if we were to kind of get down to the brass tacks of the question of should a product be political, what would you say?

Joachim:

I would say it's unavoidable given the context. It is, it is just the nature of the beast. It is shaping people's decision making. It's shaping the way they view the world. you're building a lens in many ways, sometimes for them to filter what's happening in the world. That is inherently shaping behavior. So yeah, I kind of come down the Herb Simon school of things. But yeah, there's something, but should they be political? Well, it's unavoidable, I guess. What about you, Ernest? Where are you on that?

Ernest:

Yeah, I think we're very much aligned because I would say yes, because to your point, I think the best products, like we've talked about, all express a distinct point of view that is rooted in the people who make or made that product. And so, invariably, if that's the case, then those products will be political. The only, but I would add to that as a caveat is. As I said earlier, keep that bigger picture in mind because you're not going to be able to achieve those aims you have if the product isn't successful. So, always think about that. How can I deliver on this in a way that is going to reach people, at a fundamental level beyond, Do they agree with me on this one issue or not? Um, Because, if you put something out there and no one buys it, what have you achieved? All right. Well, now that you've heard our perspectives, we want to hear from you. Should products be political? Let us know what you think at learnmakelearn@gmail.com. Now let's move on to our recommendations of the week and I'll get us started, uh, previewing our next episode, which is, which uh, is going to kind of deal with watches. Uh, I thought I would, um, highlight a product that I just purchased. Purchased very recently, actually just arrived today. And it's a watch, uh, from, uh, a German brand called Nomos and it's their model called the club campus in electric green reference seven one five, uh, specifically it's the reference seven one five GB, which is the one that has the see through Sapphire case back. Uh, and it's in the 36 millimeter diameter. We'll provide a link to it in the show notes. But, um, Um, I wanted to highlight this one. I think it's a connection into, you've mentioned Joachim, uh, kind of the Bauhaus movement and Nomos design is very much rooted in the kind of principles of the Bauhaus movement. But also I think it's a, a great, a good example, a good kind of case study in terms of product strategy. I don't want to get too into the weeds of the watch world, but in recent years, especially during the pandemic era, when a lot of people had a lot of disposable income, watch prices really went up significantly and Nomos was part of that too. They had, Before the pandemic introduced a new line of movements, automatic movements that were all engineered and designed in house. And so watches featuring those movements were more expensive, but They kept their entry level products as well, and the club campus is an example of that. people who aren't in the watch world might not think that a 1, 700 watch is an entry level product, but, in this world of, fine watches, it's a very affordable watch for what you're getting. and so I think NOMOS was very wise to not, Get caught very much like the example of the streaming services. You mentioned, you know, him or everybody pursued streaming, a lot of watch companies just went crazy with their pricing and just everything in their line went up by, uh,, huge percentage, wise in terms of cost, but Nomos was really. I think smart and disciplined in keeping watches that were accessibly priced while adding some that, did go up, but not to an egregious degree. So, and I think that speaks to their values as a company as well. Yeah, they could have. Just gone hog wild, like a lot of these other brands and, jacked up the pricing of all their watches, but they didn't. And I think that is a reflection of their values as a company, a company that wants to make watches across a broad range, and that would remain accessible, um, to people, you know, whether it's their first watch or, they just don't want to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a watch. So, I thought for a lot of reasons, it was a really nice example of a. beautiful product that, speaks to their values in terms of watchmaking, but also in terms of making really great products that a lot of people can access. So, Nomos and in particular the Club Campus line, which is, I'd say probably their most accessible line in terms of price point.

Joachim:

Yeah, their price point is, I know this is, we're going to sound like snobs, but it is entry level pricing, considering what you're getting is, you're getting a movement that is 95 percent manufactured in their factory in Glashütte in Eastern,, formerly Eastern Germany, you know,, and, uh,, a place with deep, deep history in watchmaking so yeah I appreciate that they have stayed true to just having a broad spectrum of watches that is accessible. You're right. it is a representation of their value system. The watches are also very functional and unadorned. They are explicitly stating that they have influenced by Bauhaus. The Tangente was the first model, which is a heavily, heavily lifting from old designs. So yeah, I appreciate that. That's a nice recommendation. And also a good way to just show off that you got yourself a new watch, Ernest. I love that it is literally, you did text me and you said, it's in the mail, it's supposed to come on Monday. So

Ernest:

yeah, arrived today.

Joachim:

I love that. Well, on my end, I was going to recommend a website, ifixit. com, kind of political as well, it's a product that you would, you wouldn't think it's political. It's a website that offers videos on how to repair your technology, which touches on all of the topics that we've talked about in the past. Um, and they have used their videos to help people fix problems. laptops, cameras, all kinds of things. They also do another series of videos, which is teardowns, where they take, um, equipment, especially Apple equipment has been their main focus and just break it apart, which is quite, I mean, it's scary to see someone buy a brand new vision pro and just start tearing it apart into its components, but it provides It's an invaluable service that you understand how repairable an item is before you buy it. They were really on Apple when they started gluing in components and just giving, they would always end on a rating on how repairable the device is. What's really clever about iFixit is they show you how to fix these devices. They show you which items are fixable, so they get you, when you're about to purchase, you can do your research and figure out, which item is repairable. Uh, once you have the item, they hold your hand and help you get, uh, an understanding of how to repair the device. And then they meet you exactly at that moment, when you're watching those videos and they say, by the way, you'll need some tools for this. And here are tools that we have designed to help you. explicitly for this purpose. So what a great closed loop that they've created there of luring you in with the video content is all free, the manuals are all free, you can read everything. So if you do have your own tools, you have your own components, you can repair these things yourself. For most of us, we don't have time to figure out the components. We don't have the expert knowledge. Well, we'll take their expertise on board and we'll use that. And so they give you packages on how to replace a laptop monitor, The whole thing they can help you with. Keyboards, I think the butterfly keyboard was one that they couldn't quite get because that's such a terrible keyboard. If anyone remembers, that should be a whole episode. All the fails that Apple has had and no one remembers, right? Antenna gate, butterfly keyboards, I mean, it's not great. The website's great. The products are great. I I own a lot of the tools. They're not crazy expensive. There's this really funny battle that's happening between Apple and them. For a long time, Apple would just try and make it harder, like creating screw heads that, only they had the tools for. And then within a month, iFixit said, we've got the drill bits that you need. No problem, you can open up this device. And so they were in this tug of war with Apple and eventually Apple just said, Oh, forget it. We'll try and be more repairable. And it was a really pretty cool battle. And it's still ongoing. they still call out Apple on all of these things. So ifixit. com, I recommend it. If you do have an electronic device that needs repairing, Probably the newer generation things are going to be good. There's that middle period in Apple, which is not that great. So yeah, my rec for the week. iFixit. com.

Ernest:

That's a great one. I'm embarrassed to admit that in the early days of iFixit, I was very anti iFixit. I think, uh, I had kind of a primacy of the maker mindset and I felt like, oh, they're getting in the way of progress and Apple should be allowed to make their products any way they want to. And the only way you get a product that slim is by, gluing things together but. In recent years, I've really come around, I think, I really admire the fact that they were so ahead of these issues, and have been the advocate for The owner, if you buy the product, you should be able to repair it and modify it. And, I've really come around to that. I, and I, uh, admire them for having, been so ahead of at least, certainly ahead of me on that. So I think that's a great recommendation and I really do enjoy the videos to it. It's a great call out. That's just kind of an interesting to watch.

Joachim:

Yeah.

Ernest:

All right, well. I think that does it for us. thank you so much for joining us here at learn, make, learn. As we mentioned, we want to hear from you. So please send any questions or feedback to learnmakelearn@gmail.com, and tell your friends about us In our next episode with, the Watches and Wonders trade show just around the corner, Joachim and I are going to indulge in our shared enthusiasm for wristwatches. But this won't just be an episode for watch geeks. We think the watch industry offers interesting lessons that go well beyond the world of horology. For starters, it's been decades since anyone's actually needed a watch to tell the time. And many predicted that the launch of Apple watch in 2015 would put the final nail in the coffin of the watch industry. But Swiss watch exports alone are up nearly 16 percent since 2015. And this doesn't include the booming secondary market, which is projected to reach 85 billion in value within the next decade. So, why do so many people seem so willing to pay so much for something that none of us needs? That's the crux of what we're going to dig into in the next episode of Learn Make Learn.

People on this episode

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Ernest Kim

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Joachim Groeger

Co-host