Navigating Business Risks Through Assumption Mapping

Today's guest is the one and only David Bland, author of the bestselling book Testing Business Ideas co-written with Alexander Osterwalder and part of Strategyzer's book series. 

David is one of my biggest references in Product. 

His work, combined with Teresa Torres, is such a potent cocktail for anyone wanting to build better products and discover value more effectively. 

One of the things I love about David's work is his emphasis on evidence-based decision-making and how practical he made it for teams to adopt this mindset.

We talked about: 

* How to map your assumptions and which risks to consider first

* Why working collaboratively and across various areas of the business is so important when testing desirability, viability, and feasibility

* Why you should start discovery with a small and 100% dedicated team, and expand as you generate evidence

* How desirability and viability are intertwined, and how to go about de-risking it

* How to frame hypotheses

* How to evolve your evidence from what customers say to what they do (going beyond interviews and surveys)

* How to sequence experiments and get the right balance between running 1 experiment and planning ahead

* How to test willingness to pay

* Characteristics of high-performing teams doing discovery 

* The importance of time-boxing and connecting it with how the company makes decisions and approaches funding

* How leaders can foster a culture of discovery

* And more 

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