Alright, here’s what you’re looking at:
A clinical, no-BS guide from a problem to the customer’s wallet—expanded to capture all the critical inputs and outputs. Every block in this diagram has a purpose; each step builds on the last. None of it’s negotiable if you’re serious about making an impact with your product.

That box at the top? It’s Context.
Context is the invisible line connecting a problem to a customer, shaping everything. It determines whether a solution is relevant or useless and whether a product thrives or fades into obscurity. Context is the environment, the market conditions, and the cultural backdrop. It gives meaning to a product, amplifies trends, and dictates value. Context is deeply affected by time and location.

Within this context, remember that Resources—everything from human capital and funding to market access, technology partnerships, and expert guidance—either power or constrain your ability to shape outcomes. Trends, like the current surge in AI hype, represent cultural, social, and technological waves that can rapidly alter the market’s perception and adoption of solutions. Meanwhile, Technologies—from cutting-edge AI applications to foundational hardware and infrastructure—are the building blocks that enable you to address problems in entirely new ways.

Context isn’t just something we observe; it’s not a passive waiting game. We can influence context, and we do. New ideas, technologies, and trends don’t just adapt to context; they can actively reshape it. When a groundbreaking innovation or trend hits, it doesn’t just respond to existing conditions; it shifts them, creating a new reality. Understanding context isn’t passive; it’s about seeing where you can make an impact, where your product can change the game, and where it can build relevance in ways the market hasn’t anticipated. Ignore it, and you’re lost before you begin. Shape it, and you’re leading the way.

What problem is your organisation set up to solve? Is it a real problem? If you are not solving a problem, you have no business. It’s that simple. Identify the pain, understand it, and recognise it within the context. Articulate and validate the problem constantly and as early as possible.
Don’t make sh*t up; it’ll bite you.

If your actual or future customers can recognise and articulate the problem as you do, you’re golden. Keep the customers close and constantly talk to them to understand if the main problem causes other issues. Do this often.

Most problems have more than one solution. Every solution has a raw idea, like knowing a river has gold. You need focus, method, and resources to extract that valuable thing. You need to be creative and efficient.
The way you solve a problem will give you the edge. This is where you roll up your sleeves, experiment, and refine.
This is where you need to deploy resources and figure out how to turn a solution into a product.

Your solution must be explainable and directly related to the problem. No matter how advanced, it’s useless if your customers can’t understand it. No matter how fancy the product you build around it, your initiative will fail if the market does not recognise your solution.
Validate early. Where possible, prove that it works before you build.

Notice that black box at the bottom left? That’s your organisation. Its size is almost irrelevant above a certain threshold. In many cases, being too large can be detrimental to efficiency.
Everything you create—your solution, product, features, and brand expression—originates here. Your internal capabilities, resources, and vision determine how you build, market, and scale.
The future belongs to organisations built around functions, not roles.
What do I mean by that? You can read it here.

A product can be anything: a toy, an app, or a candidate for office. I’m a big fan of the Product Levels Framework; it makes life easier by connecting value to needs and wants, wrapped in a differentiated brand. But let’s stay focused.

Your product isn’t just a list of features; it’s a vehicle for delivering the value you’ve built inside your organisation. It’ll make lives better, more interesting, and less tedious.

But a successful product? It’s got to be differentiated and relevant. This balance must be sustainable, or you have nothing to build on. Get it right, and your moat gets deeper. You don’t just have a product—you have a defensible position in the market.

Before discussing features, let me clarify something important: this vehicle we call a product must be built to move value in two directions. One way delivers the value and benefits sourced by the solution to the market; the other brings back reputation and revenue.
Your organisation’s survival depends on this transfer, and everyone in it must be aware of it.

Starting with new technologies, discoveries, or trends is tempting. Shiny new tech makes you want to ask, “What can we do with this?” But without a defined problem, you’re gambling. The solution might impress, but if there’s no real problem behind it, the value is misunderstood, and the benefit is fuzzy. Users don’t see the value, and adoption falls flat. Tech-driven solutions without purpose? Cool for a moment, forgotten just as fast.

Trends are like waves; they roll in from every direction—cultural, ideological, and technological. Some stick around, others crash and vanish. Smart companies harness trends to create benefits that resonate. Trends can reshape needs and spark new habits, but they’re just tools, not foundations.

The combination of valuable and interesting things your product can do is what we call features. Their role is to deliver the value your product is sending to the market. How they’re built and how they work together can make your product unique and contribute to the overall value.

This is the deepest “why” behind your product—the core of why it matters to users. Value fills a need, a gap in the user’s life. Miss this connection, and your product becomes irrelevant.
And yes, value is deeply influenced by context. Being able to maintain value in every context is the holy grail. How you protect the value others might be able to build and deliver should be one of your core strategies.

This is where value turns into payoff—the “what’s in it for me?” for the user.
This is where your customers should say: This is how my life is better. I love it; it’s worth every penny.

The connection between value and benefit is critical. Both need to be recognised and appreciated, together and individually. How you package and sell the value—your visuals, story, and tone of voice—is essential because you want to create the best friction possible. This is fundamental to the experience your customers and internal teams have, and it can happen at any stage: pre-purchase, during purchase, or post-purchase.

Friction will shape the experience your customers are having. If that friction is coarse, it’ll show up in your revenue and reputation.
Your job as an organisation is to monitor expectations and shape the behaviour surrounding your products and services. You do this by managing friction at every touch point.

Before discussing the market and its components, let’s address how something is presented and sold.
Product Packaging acts as the bridge between the solution and its delivery method, shaping how it is presented, bundled, and priced.

Through product packaging, you can establish a pricing model that significantly influences how customers perceive the value and affordability of your offering. This is also how you show that you are playing and staying competitive.
Products, services, and business solutions shape how that value is experienced; the storytelling, design, functionality, and cost structure all matter. How do you do that? Through testing—constant testing.

Sometimes, your product is the hero of a big story in a world plagued by problems and anxieties. Other times, and most of the time, the hero is your customer. Their story is about the problem they face and how they overcome it, empowered by your solution.

There is a caveat. Building a product and telling a story aren’t enough anymore because your customers’ needs change, and they’re constantly distracted by other offers and noise.
Your job is to make sure they remember their goals and that their goals align with what your solution provides.
You [the customer] want to get/stay in shape, and so do we [as an organisation].
You want to make better decisions and save resources, and so do we. We’re here to help.

This is the story you must write as an organisation. It’s your job to find, prime, and keep them close.
They usually look at your product through the lens of the problem you’re solving for them (JTBD helps make it practical). How they value your promise will be appreciated through their personal and professional values and principles.
That’s about it. The rest is strategy and execution.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Context dramatically impacts how they perceive your solution and the benefits they enjoy. This means you’ll have to adapt to their wants and needs constantly.

Your “big-picture” market segment is the tribe that will pay for your offering.
My best advice is to focus on your best customers. They will happily become your champions and ambassadors and advocate for you even when you are not in the room.

Every block along the way funnels down to knowing exactly who you’re serving and why they need you. This segment will grow and shrink mainly because the context is asking, and it requires you to nurture that sensible alignment of goals—yours and theirs.

A market is a complex entity: a mix of needs, wants, trends, social and political shifts, time, space, and everything in between. Maybe it’s not the definition you were looking for, but hold on tight; it gets better.

Time shapes context, and context influences demand and supply.
Recognising the dynamic, ever-changing nature of the market is essential.
It can make your product relevant or irrelevant overnight.

I find this important to say: especially for new solutions/products, markets don’t exist; they’re created, and that’s expensive. Two things worth paying attention to:
1. Disruption isn’t a feature of a product or an organisation; it’s a feature of a particular market and is strongly related to context.
2. It’s easy to confuse distraction with disruption. Distracting a market with your story or solution is much simpler than focusing attention and helping form an opinion that translates into action.

Something interesting happens because of those two points. Whenever you try to form or crack a market—whether you succeed or fail—the market either consolidates or fades away like a ghost.
Competition is great because it helps validate and consolidate a market. Your solution will validate your competitor’s solution, and that’s how markets are born and maintained. This is why markets are expensive to create. It usually takes more than one solution to solve a problem, and multiple organisations have a stake in it.

In this diagram, the Brand layer wraps around Value, Benefits, your product, service, people, organisation and ultimately, customers.

Your brand isn’t something you create outright. It’s a byproduct of every interaction between your customers and your products and services. It’s not just born within the experience—it lives outside of it, shaped by how people feel before, during, and after engaging with what you offer.

A brand is a collection of thoughts and emotions—how customers perceive your organisation when you’re not in the room. It attaches itself to identifiers like visuals, messaging, tone of voice, and triggers, but those are just tools. The actual brand is the outcome of how well you deliver value and benefits through the quality of the experiences you create.

Every touchpoint matters. The friction of onboarding, the delight of a well-timed feature, and the confidence a service instils—these moments are the building blocks of trust, loyalty, and reputation. Whether it leaves people feeling competent, safe, empowered, or valued, your brand thrives when it aligns authentically with what matters most to your audience.

Though your brand is influenced by context like everything else in this diagram, it must also be carefully seeded, nurtured, and managed—because, in the end, your brand is not what you say it is; it’s what your customers say it is.

You need fewer meetings when you expose your organisation, regardless of its size, to a concept like this. You can also show a cross-functional team where the focus will be for the next six weeks. As a result, you create better strategies and build better products.

For the last 18 months, I’ve been working on a concept with two manifestations, which I call Paradigm.

1. Paradigm Stage One: A collaboration tool built for the cloud that strips down digital product creation chaos. Think of it as your blueprint meets the command centre. It’s currently in the funding stage, and the pitch is open.

2. Paradigm Foundations: An educational program to get organisations laser-focused on what they’re building, align their product with market demand, and wrap it all in a brand people care about—four workshops over four days.

Early-bird pricing is still available.