# Redefining Innovation: Customer Value Over Novelty

**Podcast:** All Things Product with Teresa and Petra
**Published:** 2026-09-29

## Transcript

Hi folks, this is All Things Product with Petra Wille.
And Teresa Kors.
And we're so happy you're here.
Teresa.
We left the folks with a bit of a cliffhanger a few episodes ago, and we promised them that we will be talking about innovation.
And today is the day that you and I decided we're going to discuss the topic.
What is your current read on innovation?
So is innovation the aftermath of a great product discovery?
Is it the ultimate goal in product development?
What are your thoughts?
Yeah, I think what triggered this is we were talking about your trash can tracking idea.
And we were talking about like how to measure discovery.
And I think what came up was like how innovative our solutions are.
And that bothered me a little bit.
I, you know, there's a whole industry around like corporate innovation and are we innovative enough?
And when I hear innovation, what's usually how that word is meant is like, are we coming up with novel ways to serve our customer?
Yes.
And I think the problem I have with that is that we don't always need novel ways to serve the customer.
And I think when we get distracted by novel, we end up with really complex ways that aren't always the best ways to serve the customer.
That's interesting.
So because for me, and maybe it is a definitions problem so often in our industry, right?
And maybe that's because of the design schools of Dieter Rams or Brown or then ultimately Apple.
Simplicity can be so much innovation as well and reducing complexity, leaving things out, minimizing steps, all these kind of things in the history of product development.
software and hardware, I think that is where a lot of innovation came from.
So for me, it's always like innovating on behalf of the user, which is a claim that I always use.
I have no clue from whom I inherited it back in the days, but I still love this innovate on behalf of the user claim when talking to a team and when working with the team.
And that always has to do with really looking at can we reduce something?
Can we make it easier and simpler for me as well?
And that is innovative in itself to some extent.
Yeah, this is where this word is tricky for me.
And I'm going to use a very concrete example.
Let's just take logging in.
We're seeing a lot of innovation around logging in right now.
Not necessarily good ones.
But some good ones, right?
Yes, some.
Historically, I would have said this is not an area where you need to innovate.
Like, you don't need to reinvent the login process.
We're all familiar with how it works.
And this is probably not where you should spend your time.
The problem with that is that Slack came along and introduced Magic Links.
And that was, in that specific moment in time, a really nice innovation.
Yeah, and that's often what causes innovation is, right?
pressure from a competitor's side or, and I think that that is another reason why logins have been changing so much, they were just not safe enough anymore.
So technology advanced.
Okay, but that's a different issue.
Logins, I feel like, gives us a really nice timeline for innovation.
So for a long time, we had this very strong pattern of you go to a website, there's a username and password box, you fill it in, you hit enter, you get logged in.
Yeah.
Then there was like friction.
And I actually think that friction was entered because companies had to support single sign-on.
And so they couldn't ask for a username and password.
They had to ask for a username first and then decide if that username required single sign-on and then direct you to the right place.
So now what used to be a one-step process is now a two-step process.
And we're adding a little more friction.
And I think at the time that Slack introduced the magic link, it was like, look.
Whether you're single sign on or not, you can enter your email.
And the second step can just be click a link and we'll get you logged in.
And that felt like a magic link.
It was very innovative.
But then what happened is a lot of us, not all of us, and certainly not most of us outside of tech, but some of us started using tools like 1Password.
And magic links are super annoying if you use 1Password.
Indeed.
Because I don't do anything to log in anymore.
The login screen pops up, 1Password populates it, it's the button for me, and I'm logged in.
But if there's a magic link, now I have to go to my email and I have to click on the link.
And so like this, I think this is a really good example of like, for most people, we have a really strong pattern.
You probably don't need to innovate.
But there are still companies where innovating might be the right answer, but then changes the industry.
And then it changes again.
And that innovative solution isn't innovative anymore.
Yeah.
Sometimes the companies were not even in charge of the innovation because of 1Password, for example, changed the game entirely.
Right.
So it was not the companies providing the people with the login form who could have solved that for that problem.
Yeah, and I guess the problem I have with this is that our job is not to be innovative in the login process.
Our job is to make the login process as easy as possible for our customers.
And in trying to solve that problem, it might require a novel solution, but it might not.
And so like rather than focusing on the novelty of the solution, I think the focus should be on the best solution.
And if the best solution is a pedestrian pattern, we should be okay with that.
I agree.
And that's where login maybe as an example has its limitations because when I was still actively doing product management work, I loved shout out to Jeff Patton, user story mapping.
We always struggle to put things like login on a user story map because no user ever said, I would really love to log into that website.
What they wanted to do is they wanted to bookmark stuff and therefore they needed a profile where we could store their bookmarks.
They wanted it persistent.
They want the bookmarks to be synced across devices, yada, yada, yada.
And they knew and then tolerated a login because they knew to some extent we need to identify them to make all these functionality accessible, right?
And that why is innovation on a login form is maybe even trickier as an example than anything else that a user would actually say like, hey, I would love to bookmark this job posting or something like that.
Then you can think about are there good ways, more innovative ideas to do so than the competition maybe.
But for the login, it's trickier, I guess, because of that nature of the task.
Although I would argue like.
for anything, you could replace login with almost anything.
And I think if the focus is on novelty, you're often going to end up with too complex of a solution.
Yeah.
Whereas if the focus is on serving the customer, you might end up with an innovative solution.
What works best might be novel, but it might not be.
And so my concern with innovation as the target...
Is it pushing us towards novel solutions when novel solutions may not be the best solution?
What my brain currently does, and I'm still forming my opinion, but thinking along the full risks of software development right now.
And because I think they can come handy in here as well, because you can have something that is tech feasibility-wise novel and maybe innovative.
But for the user, it's not.
So in the end, what they see is rather similar to what they have seen in the past, but it does solve for tech legacy issues or it's a new kind of coding framework that makes things easier internally or stuff like that.
So I just wanted to throw that in the mix to say like, yeah, and just because something is novel on one of our dimensions, it not necessarily has to be on the other ones.
So sometimes there is innovation and novelty in things.
that look rather boring on the outside for the user and for the organization as well.
Business case innovations, oftentimes user couldn't care less.
Yeah, I think this is a good point.
Like not all innovation is novel, like has a novel impact on the user.
Yeah, exactly.
And I like what's hard about this is I'm not saying don't look for novel solutions, right?
I'm not saying don't question assumptions or look for what could be better.
I think my concern with this area is our goal isn't novelty.
Our goal is to find the best way to serve the customer.
And sometimes that requires a novel solution, but not all times.
Yeah.
And I think the framing or the push towards looking for novelty and innovation is more helpful if you're basically sharing that lens with the team.
Because the product development team has more this focus on smaller things and iterations and maintenance, enhanceability of the things that they already have.
So actually pushing them sometimes to think about, to think outside of that box and think about, okay.
is there anything that is new enough to our users to make it a thing to talk about, to make the press release around it, to whatever it is.
I think there could be helpful inspiration and one helpful lens if they're planning the next quarter or something like that.
And the product leaders know the teams that need that push.
And they will have other ones that maybe need to push in the other direction, the direction that you're saying like, hey, don't innovate for the sake of the innovation.
Yeah, I, you know, as you explain that, I think what I can agree with always is when you're considering solutions, you should always push the boundaries and look at like you should consider innovative solutions.
Right.
So I agree with this idea of like.
think outside the box, push the boundaries.
Can you just make this problem go away by coming up with a novel solution?
I think it's not true that we should always choose the novel solution.
No, yeah, agree.
Right?
Because I think novelty comes with the cost.
It comes with a burden on the user to learn a new flow, a new system.
We're seeing this right now with pass keys.
Like the average person on earth does not know what a pass key is or how to use it.
That's a lot of friction.
Even if in the long run, it removes friction.
Hopefully.
Hopefully, when implemented well.
And so I guess I think we see a lot of corporations talking about innovation and the goal is innovation.
We don't always talk about the cost of innovation.
And I don't mean the R&D costs.
I mean the mental cognitive cost to the user.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, I totally agree.
And by the way, that is one reason why I have always loved to be in truly cross-functional environments because then so often innovation or really like novel ways of approaching things came from the conversations with my engineers.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is the just now possible problem.
Yeah, that's exactly the just now possible vibe.
That is actually what always happens if you have this truly cross-functional team.
So that's where a lot of innovation comes from and that's the good type of innovation.
We observe what the customer wants and needs and where the user struggles.
The whole team says it.
And then one engineer says like...
there's a new way of solving for that problem and it's way easier and then everybody's like so happy and things are just like falling into place.
So yeah, again, my pitch for cross-functional, more cross-functional collaboration.
I also think that that highlights, I think what my major concern here is.
It's our goal is to solve the customer problem.
Our goal isn't innovation.
Innovation is only valuable if it solves the customer problem.
Yes.
Right.
And so I think some companies lose sight of that.
They think the goal is innovation.
We have whole industries around helping companies be more innovative.
I'd rather we help companies be better at solving customer problems.
Yeah, I would actually add solving them in better ways to make the company successful.
So there could be still things that are innovative that help the company to be more successful.
I think they would still count for me as innovations, maybe.
But yeah, other than that, I told you to subscribe to what you said.
And I think this comes up because of like, if I think about it from a market, like a marketplace standpoint, if I have an innovative solution, I'm clearly differentiated from my competitors.
Yes.
And that gives the customer a reason to pick me over somebody else.
So again, I'm not poo-pooing novelty.
Like there are lots of advantages to novelty when it serves the customer.
Yeah.
I love it.
I think we just forget that when it serves the customer.
Too often.
Especially if they're innovation departments, Teresa.
Especially when there's innovation departments.
Love it.
We explored this one well enough, I would say.
What do you think?
I agree.
Okay.
Thank you, Teresa.
Thanks, Petra.