Series
Politics makes the product
Three scales of decision, from government to the next desk
- Ongoing
- 12 episodes
- 266 min read
Product teams are taught to find value and to deliver it. That is necessary, and it is not enough. Part of the market is written elsewhere, by people who do not work in the company, often years before the product exists.
This series walks down three scales of decision and takes five points of view. Government first, seen from outside and then from inside, because it is the scale you see least and the one that decides earliest. The value network next, seen from the company: the customers, suppliers, funders, laboratories and trade federations a product depends on. The company last, seen from its own corridor, then from its capacity plan, that is, the work to be done set against the people available to do it. That last point of view is the only one looking upwards: what the company does with the time politics buys it.
Three episodes complete the journey: the eighth draws the line between network and politics, the ninth asks whether open source is a political tool or the backbone of a network, the tenth opens the product itself and shows, part by part, what Europe can still make.
At the end, one page brings together the instruments of the ten episodes in a sheet you fill in with your own data.
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Everything shipped, and the impact never came
You built the team, met the deadlines, hit the targets. Then the product never found its market, and a weaker competitor took the place. One force…
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Can a product become a market leader without a government’s help?
First episode of a ten-episode series on the weight of politics in the success of a product. We start with the most distant scale, the one…
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When the state steps back, the risk lands on your balance sheet
Second episode of a ten-episode series on the weight of politics in the success of a product. The first showed the trace of a public decision…
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Nvidia owes nothing to anyone, except the ground it is built on
Third episode of a ten-episode series on the weight of politics in the success of a product. The first two picked up the trace of the…
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Leading products write their own laws
Fourth episode of a ten-episode series on the weight of politics in the success of a product. A week in Madeira, a club nobody voted for,…
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The value network lets a product exist… or not
Fifth episode of a ten-episode series on the weight of politics in the success of a product. The first four showed that a public rule opens…
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Politics comes down into the company and shapes the product
Sixth episode of a ten-episode series on the weight of politics in the success of a product. The first three showed that no market-leading product escapes…
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The weaker the support, the stronger the performance has to be
Seventh episode of a ten-episode series on the weight of politics in the success of a product. The first six followed public decisions all the way…
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A network carries trust, politics carries obligation
Eighth episode of a ten-episode series on the weight of politics in the success of a product. Earlier episodes spoke sometimes of networks, sometimes of politics.…
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Open source: a political tool or the backbone of a network?
Ninth episode of a ten-episode series on the weight of politics in the success of a product. Earlier episodes showed markets blocked by whoever owned a…
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The right to repair opens the product, not yet the factory
Tenth episode of a ten-episode series on the weight of politics in the success of a product. Since June 2025, any phone placed on the European…
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Your position, on one page
Ten episodes, three scales, and one page at the end: the sheet that brings together their instruments, to be filled in from the inside out.
Extras
To read on the side, in any order.



