PoC - #5 - Privacy and Imagineering

Privacy as a differentiation, Disney Imagineering and Naval's Almanack

Welcome to Pursuit of Curiosity - #5

Greetings at the edge of the week, 

Hope you have had an interesting week and had a few moments that drove you curious and made you wonder. 

Thank you for subscribing to my newsletter, reading and most importantly reaching out to me on  Twitter or Linkedin and continuing the discussion. They really improve the quality of this conversation we are now having.

Rapid fire round this week . 3  bits I want to talk about. Plan to keep it short. 

1. Privacy as a differentiator

2. Almanack of Naval Ravikant

3. The world of Disney imagineering

Privacy as a differentiator

I watched the Apple event last week, as I always do purely for their showmanship and beautifully crafted product stories. Over the last 18-24 months, Apple has been on a song and dance about how it treats your privacy as sacrosanct. It is an interesting way of not naming anyone, yet shaming your competitions by taking the high road. But for Apple this is not a marketing message. It is belief that runs deep in its product and deeper in its ethos. 

As an example, when Biometric data like fingerprints are used ( in non Apple products ) they are usually encrypted / hashed and  stored on the devices or in the cloud.
Not Apple. 

• Firstly they don't store your fingerprint they store a mathematical representation of a fingerprint.

• Secondly your fingerprint data doesn't leave your device.

• Lastly even within the device it is stored in a secure enclave inside the processor.  That is nuts !!

The extreme lengths that Apple goes in doing this, will make you reconsider the seriousness of the threat. This is neither driven by GDPR nor CCPA. This is a company that is out to earn the customers trust.

As a product manager primarily dealing with data products, I know first hand how difficult it is to design a product with data minimisation as a primary goal but this is another level of strategic thinking.

But all that aside it helps Apple build a moat , a deep one at that. 

It makes privacy a key differentiator. This has been a customer mind space ripe for the taking for many year. While other companies where busy monetising and weaponising data , here comes along a company that is making a ton of money by refusing to monetise.

Makes you wonder why no one else went down this path !!

Almanack of Naval Ravikant 

Naval Ravikant is the founder and former CEO of AngelList. I discovered Naval Ravikant on twitter around the time this thread  dealing with how to become wealthy went viral. Since then I make sure I don't miss much of his tweets , interviews, podcasts . Pretty much any content he puts out there. He is a new age philosopher who is not just well read, but is able to express his wisdom in such beautiful pithy statements ( he call them axioms ) 

This week a fellow product guy Eric Jorgenson release a book titled Almanack of Naval Ravikant ( A guide to wealth and happiness ) The book is available for free on the website but I have already ordered it on paperback. 

It was great revisiting some of my favourite Naval quotes from last few years. Here are a couple that I hold dear

The three big ones in life are wealth, health, and happiness. We pursue them in that order, but their importance is reverse

and

Almost all biases are time-saving heuristics. For important decisions, discard memory and identity, and focus on the problem.

Would encourage you to read the book and reread it. It is a treasure trove. 

Bonus : There is this lovely hour and half long interview of Nassim Taleb by Naval Ravikant , two of my favorite modern thinkers talking to each other, on a host of topics at the launch of Taleb's book Skin in the Game ( Another must read )

Disney Imagineering 

Originally a bunch of handpicked engineers by Walt Disney himself formed this core group. Disney’s Imagineering is a section of Disney Park , filled with  the creative engineers who come up with ideas for theme parks, rides, attractions.  Not just the ideas but also making those ideas a reality with technology that typically doesn’t exist yet.

A few months ago when Disney+ launched in the UK, I spent some time watching The Imagineering Story , a documentary talking about origins , the culture and working of this group. As I kept watching it, I couldn't help but draw parallels to the product development world. 

• Firstly engineering is seen as a creative function.
  A bunch of engineers trying to express a Disney narrative using technology without really making technology  the story. The customer experience obsession is beyond crazy !!

• Discovery is an integral part of the product development process.
  In fact immersive discovery. People spend years learning how to just make rocks look more natural. Others who spend decades to perfect how to make a roller coaster feel faster than it actually is. 

• Always pushing the boundaries of what is possible.
  In Disney water parks, to avoid the Chlorine smell that you get in pools and other water parks they use Bromine. Significantly more expensive and not done anywhere else . But for Disney , the chlorine smell didn't fit with their story and narrative and customer experience.

• Pride in the craft
  What sets awesome engineers apart from great engineers is the pride in their craft. Phew !! This holds true at Disney and a few* places I have worked at. You have to watch this documentary to experience it.

Bonus : I first learnt about the existence of  Disney Imagineering from Randy Pausch's  Last Lecture ( A very inspiring  90 mins video which my Dad and I have since watched repeatedly , always with a lump in our throats and moist eyes )

That is for this week folks

Would love to hear from you . Do share and  sign up to the newsletter if you haven’t done so yet.

Until next week , be curious 

Ram Rao