Fast, or Best? Choose your decision-making goal wisely, especially if you're a natural perfectionist.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Satisficing vs Maximizing
Articles from A Smart Bear
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Fast, or Best? Choose your decision-making goal wisely, especially if you're a natural perfectionist.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
This simple method positions your product to be more valuable, especially against competitors who aim to disrupt you, or you them.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Everything about a startup changes over time. The few things that don't, are its essence. The voyage is meaningless, unless you decide what those things are.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
This fresh take on "Willingness-to-Pay" analyzes three types of customer motivation, leading to superior strategies for growth that also better the world.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
No you can't "have it all." You can have two things, but not three.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
A business always takes more money than you expect, even when you take this fact into account. Here's why.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
A startup is a crucible -- a fiery place that tests your limits, not by probing them but by violently exceeding them, all of the time. It's worth it.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
You can charge much more than you think, if you reposition your value-proposition. Here's how.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Are you crying in the shower because you can't handle it anymore? Beyond Impostor Syndrome: Complete melt-down? Well, at least you're in good company.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Many startups fail despite identifying a real problem and building a product that solves that problem. This explains why, so you can avoid their fate.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Decisions should usually be made quickly, to accelerate action and learning. But sometimes it really is smarter to take your time. Here's how to decide.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Pricing is inextricably linked to brand, product, and purchasing decisions. It cannot be "figured out later," because it determines your business model today.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
We dramatically, repeatedly fail to predict the future. Does that mean "strategy" is senseless? No, it means you need these techniques to navigate a volatile world.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
What creates a fulfilling existence? Exploration leads to a framework I've used for years for myself and the people around me. I hope it helps you too.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
A simple but effective system, used to vet what is now a Unicorn, for generating insights about how your potential customers think, what they need, and what they'll buy.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
The vaunted "single-threaded, ordered list" confuses "prioritization" with "work-planning," and forces comparisons of the un-comparable. Here's the solution.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
This complete work-prioritization framework builds on the simplistic "Rocks, Pebbles, Sand" analogy, adding the details you need in the real world.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Binstack is a technique for selecting the "single most impactful" solution when there are multiple, incomparable dimensions to evaluate.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Traditional rubrics fail to reveal the best answers, or how to explain those answers to others. After explaining why, the following system solves both failures.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
We invented this strategic exercise at WP Engine -- engaging both Marketing and Product, generating actions for both sides that make products more desirable and competitive.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Meetings are most productive when we create something that none of us could have created alone. Here are several ways to use meeting time wisely.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Industries commoditize over time, delivering similar products at similar prices resulting in low profit. Moats are the antidote; your strategy must create some.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
According to the internet, being a Product Manager is impossible. Can you ever measure up? No. But don't worry, there's a better answer.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
This admonition recurs in myriad books, frameworks, and topics, across decades of time. When something is so consistent, it must be wisdom.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
We know, "no idea is a bad idea," but brainstorming is often unsuccessful. These prompts actually work. They could even lead to a unique business model.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Even Facebook and Slack did not grow "exponentially," as frequently described. Here is the correct model that you can use to understand and affect growth.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
A lesson all pilots know: How you must use multiple dials, employing different sources of energy, to report identical data, because some of it is always lying.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
A simple, decentralized, scalable, constant-memory mechanism for independent replicas to record events in time, preserving the "happened-before" relation in almost all cases.
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
What if your tech company has peaked? Is relentless growth the only path, or is it time to redefine your true impact on the world?
A Smart Bear
• Jason Cohen
Independent or acquired, companies always evolve, and not always for the better. Smart exits can create opportunities for everyone involved.