Sign in Subscribe

Unpacking Innovation - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra Wille

Unpacking Innovation - All Things Product Podcast with Teresa Torres & Petra Wille

Listen to this episode on: Spotify | Apple Podcasts

Is innovation the goal — or just a byproduct of solving customer problems well? In this episode of All Things Product, Petra Wille and Teresa Torres unpack one of the most misused words in product: "innovation." Teresa makes the case that chasing novelty for its own sake pushes teams toward complex solutions that don't actually serve customers better, while Petra argues that simplicity and reduction can be their own kind of innovation.

Using the surprisingly rich history of the humble login — from passwords to single sign-on to Slack's magic links, 1Password, and passkeys — they explore why yesterday's breakthrough becomes today's friction, why novelty carries a hidden cognitive cost for users, and where the best innovation actually comes from (hint: it's often a cross-functional "just now possible" moment).

A must-listen for product managers who want to differentiate without over-engineering — and who'd rather be great at solving customer problems than "innovative" for its own sake.

In this episode

  • The problem with "innovation" as a target. Teresa explains why the word bothers her: when teams optimize for novel ways to serve customers, they often land on complex solutions that aren't the best ones. Petra reframes innovation as reduction — leaving things out, minimizing steps, "innovating on behalf of the user."
  • The login timeline. A concrete walk through how one "boring" problem kept getting reinvented: username/password → single sign-on adding a two-step flow → Slack's magic links as a genuine moment of innovation → 1Password making magic links annoying again → passkeys, which most people don't yet understand. The lesson: an innovative solution changes the industry, then stops being innovative — and sometimes the company that changes the game (1Password) isn't even the one that owns the problem.
  • Not all innovation is novel to the user. Something can be genuinely novel on one dimension — technical feasibility, a new framework, the business case — while looking completely ordinary to the customer. Novelty on one axis doesn't require novelty on the others.
  • The cost of novelty. Beyond R&D, there's a cognitive cost: every novel flow asks users to learn a new system. Passkeys are the current example — friction now, in the hope of less friction later.
  • Where good innovation comes from. The "just now possible" moment: in a truly cross-functional team, discovery surfaces a real customer struggle, and an engineer says, "there's a new way to solve that — and it's easier." Petra's pitch for cross-functional collaboration as the source of the good kind of innovation.
  • The bottom line. The goal is to solve the customer problem. Innovation is only valuable when it does that. There's a whole industry built around helping companies "be more innovative" — Teresa would rather help them get better at solving customer problems.

Key takeaways

  • Innovation is a means, not the goal — it only matters when it serves the customer better.
  • Chasing novelty tends to produce complexity; optimizing for the best solution sometimes lands on a familiar pattern, and that's okay.
  • Simplicity and reduction are a legitimate form of innovation.
  • Every novel solution carries a cognitive cost — users have to learn it.
  • A solution can be innovative for the business or the tech stack while looking totally ordinary to the user.
  • The most durable innovation often emerges from cross-functional discovery, not an "innovation department."
  • Differentiation through novelty is valuable — as long as you don't drop the "when it serves the customer" part.

Resources & Links:

Mentioned in this episode:

Join the Conversation:

Have thoughts on this episode? Leave a comment below.

Full Transcript

Read next