First Principle Thinking : A PM’s Perspective

Empirically, two fundamental ideas have shaped great Consumer Experience

1. An Understanding of Core Consumer experience i.e First Principles
2. Having the resources to build that experience

“You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work back toward the technology — not the other way around. -Steve Jobs”

I fundamentally believe that someways of thinking/building are way more useful than others and thus today I want to focus on the most critical way to approach any service or product experience

HOW TO THINK FROM FIRST PRINCIPLES

So lets start

1. What are first principles of any idea or thought ?

First principles are the fundamental building blocks of an Idea . They are most indivisible parts which are used to build complex thoughts

To put this into perspective , the smallest subcategory of a thought in a domain is a first principle . The cycle of gaining knowledge from Experience and using Reason to give it structure is how one gets to know the first principles in the idea

Think of your Knowledge of a domain as a Tree , the unconventional or first principle thinker will think of knowledge tree in 3 parts

1. The Fruit which is the outcome of your product experience i.e Sales of business / Value creation for End- User
2. The Trunk which is connected to the branches of the tree which is the feature/product experience experience i.e Any engagement feature like sending a text message , doing a video call
3. The Roots which is the basic problem we are trying to solve or the most fundamental part of the tree which gives rise to the fruit i.e End to end encrypted cheap unlimited text messaging for a seamless communication experience

The Tree structure of first principles

2. How does a first principle thinker THINK ?

A first principle thinker from experience will not only gather data or knowledge but also through reason organise the data to understand fundamental building blocks for the experience

The Cellular Pedagogy of first principle

To better understand this , a conventional PM will think we can put the feature experience to any Target Set and we will see the fruit or to put in layman terms sales / revenue which is very shallow to think of

Whereas a First principle thinker/PM upon understanding the roots of the tree or the MVP of a product as we say will conclude its the soil or the Target Set of Users which has the most broken experience for which the product makes sense

For example , the Penetration of Whatsapp messaging platform in developing / industrialised nations is way higher than in the US where the MAU is a mere 23 million

Look at the graph of growth of monthly active users of WhatsApp in India

Source Link : Statista

A conventional PM might think of this as a part of user experience or better features which got adoption like Group Video etc

But

A First principle thinker will breakdown this to the level of basic bits of the communication service and conclude 2 basic points

1. In the US market , text messaging was already very cheap and seamless as it came with the Purchase plan of the phone i.e Apple messaging experience + Cheap mobile subscriber plans i.e T-mobile , Verizon already provided a great user experience and low costs . Thus penetration of Whatsapp was limited from the core value it is offering to the segment
2. In the India Market , the opposite worked — till 2016 most of our data packs were extremely expensive ( remember the days when 1 GB data used to cost upwards of 1000 bucks and we used to text message our crushes ! Atleast I did) and the SMS experience was shitty

Thus a conventional PM will be focused a lot more on gather data than tying it to the root of the tree whereas a First principle thinker will invest in gathering more trees of knowledge and connecting the dots

Likewise an idea which stems from fundamental first principles will be itself fundamental and true

Naturally if the simple parts of an idea are whole and true , then the complex amalgamation of the thoughts will be whole and true

3. How to re-learn First Principle thinking and apply it to your work ?

“A great product is like a great essay — enjoyable to consume but difficult to produce “

So the first step of identifying first principles of a great product is the break it in its component parts . To make this clear I use the essay corollary i.e

An essay is a collection of PARAGRAPHS

A paragraph a collection of SENTENCES

Sentences are made up of WORDS

and words are made of LETTERS

and letters are the fundamental building blocks of an essay . Once the components of the essay / product are identified we can work on improving each aspect of it . If the each individual elements are remarkable the totality of the essay/ product will be remarkable

Essay by First Principles

That is the art of first principle thinking

4. Benefits of First Principle Thinking ?

The benefits of breaking down an idea to first principles has several advantages , the first being

1. INNOVATION- Once you identify the fundamental blocks of a service or product you can re-arrange them in any manner to come up with a better idea/ better business model / better product offering i.e Like in our essay example , we can put together such essays in a structured format and call it a BOOK ( invented something new )an entirely new offering which is more than the essay you wanted to create and begin with
2. The second benefit is OPTIMIZATION — A fundamental component can be changed to improve an idea or a product . For example if we know the fundamental components of a service we can potentially improve every part to make a better product but it cannot happen

But without knowing these components its impossible to make any such sort of improvement

Fundamentals of a Product

3. The third benefit is INTEGRATION — once you know the foundational compenents of an Idea , it becomes way more easier to add new tweaks to the idea and grow vertically or horizontally

I.E if you know how to write letters it becomes easier to create words and if you know how to write words you can make sentences

4. The final benefit is DISSEMINATION — understanding the foundational components of an Idea makes it easier to transfer the complex information to another person

This is exactly school’s learning pedagogy was designed for

5. So how to start on this journey to become a first principle thinker ?

The single most important actionable advice I give to my friends , aspirants or peers is to create hierarchies of Information . Most ideas are information which is nested inside or outside the idea and its the job of a first principle thinker to map out how these ideas are linked

Nested information of Ideas

As a thinker/ PM would say knowledge begins with experience . The world is presenting fruits around you ( amazing and complex acts of creation ).

Discovering the roots of these creations is questions such as

1. WHY
2. HOW
3. WHEN

The ultimate experience seeker should not be satisfied from the fruit but rather leads to the roots of that experience .

Once they have broken down the idea to the fundamental roots they have arrived at the First Principles

These fundamentals can be used to innovate , optimize , learn and teach others

First Principle Benefits

A starting point for any PM can be to take a piece of paper and create a hierarchy of Information using mind maps as we did with the essay example

Mind Maps for first principle thinking

There are multiple personal benefits to First Principle thinking for anyone i.e

1. CREATIVITY BOOSTER — first principle thinkers are more curious and will always want to understand how a certain core process can be innovated like a book reading habit etc
2. FOCUS ON EVOLUTION — a first principle thinker as he understanding the core workings of an experience will be able to predict evolving trends pretty early
3. EXPONENTIAL GROWTN IN AMBITION — since these thinkers dont think of being a part of a process but rather as an observer they are pretty quick to identify gaps and innovate thus become ambitions
4. VALUE CREATION FOR ECOSYSTEM — first principle thinkers always understand the value of disseminating these concepts and focus more on eco-system gain than personal growth which is a cycle as it eventually improves them only !

To build a rocket ship we need to fundamentally understand the aspects of

1. Combustion of fuel
2. Escape velocity
3. Strength of Material

and many more points! but the fundamental point again is to break down the concepts into core — basic tools to look and shape a product

I am pretty awestruck — how elon musk was asked this somewhere that inspite of having no background in Space tech, how did he dare to start SpaceX

The response was pretty sweet

“ I READ and Connect the dots”

So are you a first principle thinker ? If not start now — Its never too late