Brilliant work. And it makes me think - we produce tools, that are part of two phase spaces - the idea and the knowledge of how to create it. Firstly I simply would not have thought of it, "like button inflation" is a pretty off the wall concept. On top of which I don't know where to get an HN data feed or how to make a chrome extension etc.
Yesterday I was on a call with a collegue and the conversation turned to a useful feature we did not have (internal use) - and 30 minutes after the idea we had coded it up - because we had the knowledge but only lacked the idea till that moment.<p>Without that knowledge even the best idea moves the process from "yeah let's do it" to "I should schedule some time and make a project plan and ..."<p>The difference is important somehow. And most of our working lives would be better if we stopped with the project plans and just built useful stuff.<p>Edit: To try and clarify - exploring a new and uncharted phase space is <i>exploration</i> - it cannot be planned in advance, or driven in a particular direction. Sun-Tzu teaches that Climate, Landscape and doctrine all affect our success as much or more than mission and leadership - so we should stop trying to control and actually find the flow.<p>I think we search for product-market fit, we do not <i>decide</i> product market fit.<p>One tool I realise i have been trying to build on and off is a post-hoc reporting tool that makes it look like my exploratory development style was actually planned (it's always something like, I am going to explore this inferring hill over there, and just make sure the roadmap, docs and timesheets are up to date.) This way I don't get people bothering me so much. It works better than grumpy.