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- Cross-Functional #173: Timely Limits vs. Limitless Profits!
Cross-Functional #173: Timely Limits vs. Limitless Profits!
Expect Tension in the Tech Industry in 2024!
Rory Madden
January 17, 2024
Timely Limits vs. Limitless Profits!
In Peter Thiel’s book Zero to One he argues that you should avoid competition because it erodes profits. Instead, it would help if you aimed to be a monopoly. While this approach may benefit companies, it may not always be in the best interests of customers.
Take, for instance, Apple's App Store and the now infamous 30% fee imposed on all payments. A recent case involved Hey, an email client from Basecamp, whose new calendar app was initially rejected because it lacked a signup link. To circumvent the fee, Hey expected users to sign up on their website before downloading the app. Although Apple eventually relented due to public backlash, many smaller companies face similar challenges regularly.
Some argue that Apple deserves this revenue as a reward for its innovations with the iPhone. However, the App Store's immense profitability has discouraged Apple from implementing new web standards in its Safari browser for the past five years. This has forced companies to maintain separate web and native apps when modern web standards could have provided an equivalent user experience.
Luckily the EU forced Apple to implement the standards so I expect we’ll hear more about Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) in 2024.
P.S. Completely unrelated to companies profiting for too long on old inventions, Mickey Mouse is now free from his contract and is #opentowork
Will 2024 be the year of the PWA? |
This Weeks Updates
Enabling the Team
The Power of Simplicity: A Simple Management Formula To Wild Success by Joost Minnaar
40,000 employees, $5.5 billion in revenue and a simple management approach: hire smart people, share rewards with everyone and let go.
Overcoming Digital Transformation’s Major Challenges by Nagarajan Chakravarthy
There are lots of reasons why digital transformations fail. Here are 6 ways to try to improve your odds of success.
Product Direction
Product Managers vs Product Leaders by Marty Cagan
How we name roles is misleading but they are industry standards. Marty discusses what he thinks each role should do.
Ask Teresa (and the Community): What Do You Do With Stakeholder Feature Requests? by Teresa Torres
Learn how to handle stakeholder feature requests that don’t relate to your current outcome or discovery efforts.
Continuous Discovery
User Research x Product Teams: How to Build a Stronger Partnership by Nikki Anderson
Working closely with product managers, designers, and developers not only enhances the user experience but also sets the foundation for user research growth.
Getting user-centred design work into agile planning increments by Vicky Teinaki
Practical tips on how to stop fighting the ways that teams work and figure out how to work with them.
Continuous Design
Story Mapping: The Game-Changer in UX Design by Eduardo Feo
Eduardo gives an overview of user story mapping and how it can help you visualise the big picture, stay user-focused, spot gaps and prioritise features.
Tell Better Stories by Jeremy Connell-Waite
Not sure if this is a trend but loving the shift from blog post to a dedicated site. Learn the skills to tell better stories.
Continuous Delivery
Event Streaming: Tips for Event-Driven Apps by Capital One Tech
Event streaming gives apps the ability to observe, record and react to events in real-time. Here are 3 tips to get you started.
Serverless and Agile by Benjamen Pyle
Serverless and Agile are the perfect combination for delighting customers, empowering people and leveraging modern technology.
New In-Person Event Announced
FREE COMMUNITY EVENTS
ONLINE 30 Jan: Empathetic UX: Merging Gamified Research and Social Responsibility 06 Feb: Mastering AI Tools and Cognitive Insights for a Captivating UX Portfolio 13 Feb: From Ideation to Delight in Design | IN-PERSON 06 Feb: Priceline, New York, In-person 13 Feb: MOB, Barcelona, In-person 22 Feb: Techspace, Berlin, In-person 28 Feb: Imaguru, Warsaw, In-person |
THE UXDX MAJOR EVENTS
UXDX USA | 15 - 17 May 2024
📍 New York & Livestreamed Online
UXDX EMEA | 9 - 11 Oct 2024
📍 Dublin & Livestreamed Online
JOB OF THE WEEK
Senior Director, Engineering - Identity
🏬 DocuSign
📌 Full-Time, Seattle, Washington; Chicago, Illinois.
About N26
In the Senior Director of Engineering - Identity role, you will lead the team that is responsible for DocuSign Agreement Cloud’s high-volume, low-latency user management services. Come help build a highly scalable, performant, available, and secure global service. If you enjoy fast-paced environments, solving hard problems, and innovation within distributed systems, we want to talk to you!
New Video Release This Week
What will be the best organisational design strategies? Joseph offers in this talk a comprehensive overview of additive and reductive strategies, crucial for anyone involved in organisational design. Want to know more? 👇👇👇
The Results of Last Week’s Poll
The question was: What is your preferred learning style?
Users responded:
We have a clear winner with 43% of our community strongly favouring Visual and Logical learning styles. This group thrives on learning through slideshows, infographics, and charts. In second place, a substantial 21% of respondents prefer the Physical and Naturalistic approach, preferring in-person, hands-on workshops! Luckily they’re the two ways that conferences help people to learn!