Introducing the Product Boodham
In the Indian language Tamil, பூதம் (read as ‘boodham’) means genie/monster.
Why in the first place there has to be a boodham and that too particularly for the function of the product management? Isn’t monsters generally associated with the evil spirit and not-so-good intentions?
But our boodham here is not like the other monsters. Let’s not stereotype this guy. He is much like Maurice (the hormone monster on the Netflix series ‘Bigmouth’ or say Aladdin’s genie)
Need to know how this monster came into existence? Read to know more.
Birth of the boodham
Meet the PB (apparently he won't show its face)
Well, I recently came across a TED talk given by Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the book ‘eat, pray, love’ called ‘Your elusive genius’. In the whole video, she would have spoken about how the word genius was first used and later how the concept of genius changed altogether after the period of rationalism. Let me try to encapsulate the essence of the video in a few lines.
It has to be noted that Elizabeth has gained an immense success from teh book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ and the following thought process took place in her mind only after she felt the anxiousness if she will ever be able to give that kind of success again in her career. And this is how it goes, Elizabeth would have initially explained about the notion how artistry in general and suffering are intertwined and the former will eventually only an artist to anguish. She would, later on, continue to explain how this assumption about artists and artistry makes her feel uncomfortable.
To alleviate this discomfort, she did some research and came up with this -
In ancient Greece and ancient Rome people did not happen to believe that creativity came from human beings. People believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons.
The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity “daemons.” Socrates, famously, believed that he had a daemon who spoke wisdom to him from afar.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, author of ‘Eat,Pray,Love’
Now, back to our story, after watching this video, I felt that this concept of genius does not suit the artists alone. In fact, a product manager also has to create, innovate, collaborate and this line of work requires a person to be really creative. Even though there are frameworks for getting the desired product, wouldn’t it be good to have a genius enter our body and make us create some of the best products?
Products (both hardware and software) that would enable people to live a happier, easier and better life.
And everyone knew that this is how it functioned, right? So the ancient artist was protected from certain things, like, for example, too much narcissism, right? If your work was brilliant, you couldn’t take all the credit for it, everybody knew that you had this disembodied genius who had helped you. If your work bombed, not entirely your fault, you know? Everyone knew your genius was kind of lame.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, author of ‘Eat,Pray,Love’
What does he do?
There is just one difference when it comes to this monster/ genius, this guy does not just enter your mind and body to give out the best products, but also teaches you a lot of product stuff. Through Product boodham, I will be penning down some articles and tear-downs that would help product managers and product enthusiasts to learn more about the art.
So, stay tuned.
