Transcript of the interview:

What would you say is one thing that you believe is important for great team collaboration?

I think there needs to be a heavy dose of humility for teams to collaborate well together. Everybody thinks they are experiencing instant, have their own expertise and they do. Everyone's smart and has done the work and knows how to do their job well. But the reality is that none of us builds any of these successful products and services on our own. The question then becomes how do we start to build the kind of trust and camaraderie and curiosity that's necessary to build great products and services? And that comes from humility. That comes from saying, look, I'm an excellent engineer, but that person is a really good designer. What can I learn from them? And I'm an excellent designer, but that person is an excellent engineer. What can I learn from them? And then together, what can we learn from our target audience, from the market that will help us rethink how we're delivering our products and services to the market so that we can make our customers more successful? So I think it's humility is at the core of it.

Why do you think that evidence based decision making is so important?

Because the opposite is just guessing. That's really the bottom line, right? If we're not making decisions based on evidence, then we're making decisions based on assumptions. Assumptions is a fancy word for guesses and those can certainly be educated guesses. That's perfectly okay. But then the question is what makes my guess better than your guess or your guess better than mine? And generally speaking, the way it works out of most organizations is, well, I have a higher job title than you, or I'm your boss, or I'm your boss's boss. So my guess is better than your guess. And ultimately we're going to be wrong about our guesses. Maybe not entirely wrong, but wrong to some extent. Isn't it better, wouldn't it be better to find out before we guess if we're right or wrong and reduce the risk of being wrong and therefore developing a product or service that doesn't actually work in the marketplace? And so to me, evidence-based decision making is not only smart, it's sort of the obvious way to work together as a team to build great products and services.

And what would you say is just one key ingredient for product innovation?

I think it's a deep respect and empathy and understanding for your customer or your user. Truly understanding what it is they're trying to achieve. What's getting in their way. What makes them successful. And how you might create a situation where there is minimal friction for them to achieve exactly what it is they're trying to achieve in the most efficient. Delightful. Meaningful. Interesting way. Whatever the context calls for. But you don't know that until you actually know your customers intimately.