What should a founder read to understand product discovery properly?

This whitepaper has no templates by design; it is meant to be quoted, not filled in. What it offers instead is a reading list, the primary sources behind each methodology and mental model, arranged in the order a founder should read them.

Which are the primary sources behind Design Thinking, JTBD, Lean Startup and the Double Diamond?

This whitepaper has no templates by design; it is meant to be quoted, not filled in. What it offers instead is a reading list, the primary sources behind each methodology and mental model, arranged in the order a founder should read them.

Template pack · Product Discovery

§ Discovery is the one whitepaper in this collection without working documents. Its subject is how to think, and thinking does not come in a template. What follows is a reading list: the primary sources behind Part II and Part IV, arranged in the order that builds on itself, with one line on what each is for.

§ A.1The distinction#

§Steve Blank, The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2005). Customer development, market types, and the original instruction to get out of the building. Dense, dated in its examples, still the foundation.

§Teresa Torres, Continuous Discovery Habits (2021). The clearest modern statement of opportunity versus solution, and the weekly-conversation habit. Written for product trios; translate down.

§ A.2The lineage#

§Tim Brown, "," Harvard Business Review (June 2008). The essay that named the movement. Twelve pages; read it instead of any guide.

§Clayton Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David Duncan, "Know Your Customers' ," Harvard Business Review (September 2016). The milkshake, and the theory in its authors' words.

§Bob Moesta, Demand-Side Sales 101 (2020). Jobs to Be Done as a practice: the switch interview and the forces of progress. The operational companion to Christensen.

§Eric Ries, The Lean Startup (2011). Validated learning and the . Read the whole book; the summaries lose the argument about what progress is.

§Steve Blank, "Why the Start-Up Changes Everything," Harvard Business Review (May 2013). The short version and its context.

§Beck et al., Manifesto for Agile Software Development (2001). Four values, twelve principles, one page. Read the page, not the industry that grew around it.

§Design Council, Framework for Innovation (2019). The in its authors' current words, including the principles they added around it.

§ A.3The mental models#

§Richard Rumelt, Good Strategy Bad Strategy (2011). Diagnosis before policy. The best book on first principles that never uses the phrase.

§Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems: A Primer (2008), and "Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System" (1999). The primer for systems thinking and the essay that ranks where to push.

§Jeff Bezos, 2015 Letter to Shareholders. One-way and two-way doors, in about two paragraphs.

§Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan, "Discovery-Driven Planning," Harvard Business Review (1995). Test the assumption that kills the plan first. Thirty years old and unimproved.

§Gary Klein, Seeing What Others Don't (2013). What an is and how people actually arrive at one.

§ A.4The failures#

§CB Insights, The Top Reasons Startups Fail. Updated periodically. The base rate for building what nobody wants.

§Marty Cagan, Inspired (2017) and Empowered (2020). The four risks, product teams versus feature teams, and the large-company version of everything in this book, useful precisely for seeing what does not transfer.