Storytelling at the Heart of Product Development

Why we need storytelling

There's an interesting question on Quora right now:

If you had to pick between an amazing product designer or an amazing engineer to build a new company around, which would you pick and why?

This question reflects a painful problem that is common at both small startups and large corporate organizations. Far too often, teams focus on execution before defining the product opportunity and unique value proposition. The result is a familiar set of symptoms including scope creep, missed deadlines, overspent budgets, frustrated teams and, ultimately, confused users. The root cause of these symptoms is the fact that execution focuses on the how and what of a product. But in a world where consumers are inundated with choices, products that want to be noticed and adopted must be rooted in the why......"