IS “ABUNDANCE” ALSO A PRODUCT STRATEGY?
Observations from the recent New York Times bestseller, “Abundance: The Economics of Abundant Thinking” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and what it reveals about building breakthrough products
So here's the thing about reading Klein and Thompson’s Abundance while sitting lakeside at a cabin in the Northwoods of Minnesota: I thought I was diving into a book about American governance and policy. Instead, I found myself constantly drawing parallels to everything that's broken (and occasionally brilliant) about how we build products today.
I couldn't shake the feeling that Klein and Thompson weren't just diagnosing America's innovation problem - they were accidentally writing one of the more straightforward and articulate product strategy guides I've read in years. Strip away the political context, and you've got a master class in organizational transformation, innovation culture, and the mindset shifts that separate companies that create the future from those that just manage the status quo.
We've Lost Faith in the Future (And It Shows)
Abundance opens with this gut punch: "We have lost the faith in the future that once powered our optimism. We fight instead over what we have, or what we had."
Wow, does this hit close to home. How many product organizations have you encountered that spend more energy fighting over headcount, timelines, and status updates than dreaming about what's possible? I've sat in too many meetings where brilliant people waste their brain power creating PowerPoint decks and arguing over the same tired resources instead of asking, "What if we could solve this completely differently?" We're so busy managing the present that we've forgotten how to imagine the future.
It's like we've all agreed that innovation is a zero-sum game. Innovation budgets? First thing cut when earnings disappoint. Breakthrough thinking? Nah, let's run another A/B test on button colors. We've become master curators of mediocrity, waxing nostalgic about the "good old days" while PowerPointing (or GoogleSliding, if that’s your flavor) our way through another quarter of incremental improvements.
True Empowerment (It's Rarer Than You Think)
When Pennsylvania's I-95 bridge collapsed, Governor Josh Shapiro pulled off something that felt like magic: rebuilding it in 12 days instead of months. His secret sauce? "Empower strong leadership."
Here's what Klein and Thompson discovered: The key to the rebuild was that the people in charge of the rebuild could act. Said Shapiro, “Managers of every component of the project were empowered to be decisive, take ownership and make a call when necessary—not defer and delay to the often-circular bureaucracy."
Now, if you're like me, you've probably heard the phrase "empowered product teams" roughly a gazillion times. But here's the uncomfortable truth: how often do we actually encounter them? Real empowerment isn't just giving teams permission to implement predetermined solutions — it's trusting smart people to identify the right problems and solve them without requiring approval from seventeen different stakeholders. This is what’s called agency. And I’ve seen it turn once-mediocre product managers into rockstars.
There’s long been much discussion about the optimal size of a team or an organization in terms of productivity - it’s assumed that startups “move fast” and large complex organizations are slow and uncreative. But the I-95 story crystallized something that's been nagging at me: It doesn't matter if your organization is big or small. What matters is whether it's good at getting things done. Success comes from the outcomes you deliver, not the process you follow.
“Real empowerment isn’t just giving teams permission to implement predetermined solutions — it’s trusting smart people to identify the right problems and solve them without requiring approval from seventeen different stakeholders. This is what’s called agency.”
Why We Keep Taking Trips to Portugal
Klein and Thompson talk about "the burden of knowledge" — how the more obvious problems we solve, the harder the remaining ones become. For example, the first chemical element was discovered in a pot of hot urine (true story!). The most recent required teams of scientists and billion-dollar particle accelerators.
This escalating complexity has created what I call the "Portugal problem." Klein and Thompson share this brilliant satirical piece originally published in the prestigious genetics journal Genome Biology where Queen Isabella mocks Columbus for not having preliminary data about crossing the Atlantic, suggesting he try a shorter, safer trip to Portugal instead.
"Everybody knows that Portugal is immediately west of Spain," Columbus responds. "What will you learn from that?"
"Not much, if anything," the Queen replies. "But it can't fail now, can it?"
Ugh. How many product roadmaps have you seen that are basically just trips to Portugal? Safe bets that guarantee we'll land somewhere familiar instead of discovering new continents? When every initiative needs an iron-clad NPV with a guaranteed ROI, we systematically eliminate any possibility of stumbling onto something transformative.
I get it — nobody wants to be the person who championed the spectacular failure. But here's what keeps me up at night: what happens when we collectively decide that Portugal is good enough?
What Bell Labs Knew (That We Forgot)
Klein's deep dive into DARPA and Bell Labs had me yelling, “YES! YES, THIS!” to the loons floating nearby (lucky them, they were the only creatures within earshot), because I've actually seen this magic happen. The formula isn't complicated: hire brilliant people from different disciplines, give them space to think, and make sure they actually talk to each other.
“The formula isn’t complicated: hire brilliant people from different disciplines, give them space to think, and make sure they actually talk to each other.”
Bell Labs succeeded because AT&T's monopoly status meant they could think in decades, not quarters. Scientists could pursue wild ideas for years, leading to fiber optics, electronic switching, and basically half the technology that makes modern life possible.
DARPA works because program managers get to play with open-ended budgets and vast networks. They approach problems like master puzzle-solvers, snapping together pieces from completely different domains.
Now contrast this with today's reality, where product managers spend more time creating decks and docs for leadership than having breakthrough conversations. Their creativity gets "pinched by grantsmanship" instead of unleashed toward meaningful problems.
I've been lucky enough to witness the Bell Labs approach firsthand — twice, actually, at Target. Both times, we grabbed the smartest people from completely different disciplines, stuck them in a room hidden a safe distance away from the corporate mothership, and basically said, "Go solve something important."
And you know what? They did. Both teams achieved remarkable breakthroughs that redefined what was expected of a mass retailer experience at the time.
But here's the heartbreaking part: both teams got dismantled. The first because their success ultimately made the main app look bad. The second because quarterly profit pressure killed a revolutionary store concept just two weeks before we were supposed to break ground.
Corporate inertia and short-term thinking literally eliminated the possibility of progress. Makes you wonder what Target might look like today if we'd let those teams (and others like them) keep going, doesn't it?
There Is No Magic Without Implementation
Here's something Klein emphasizes that really resonates: "Implementation, not mere invention, determines the pace of progress." Most breakthrough inventions start out pretty terrible — they need what economist Joel Mokyr calls subsequent "microinventions": all the tinkering, refining, and scaling required to transform promising ideas into products that actually matter.
This insight cuts straight to the heart of what drives me crazy about how we approach product development—and frankly, capital-I Innovation in general. I think this is exactly why Innovation teams got such a bad rap over the years: they'd spin up these brilliant, impractical, unscalable solutions and then wonder why nothing ever shipped. Good ideas are absolutely nothing if you can't build them—which is exactly why Human Code Alchemy focuses on bridging that gap between insight and implementation. Launching something isn't the finish line — it's mile marker one. The real magic happens in the iteration, the careful evolution that takes "pretty good" concepts and makes them transformative.
But how often do we see executives expecting features to ship perfectly on day one, then immediately pivot to the next shiny initiative? Real innovation requires the patience and commitment to make good ideas great through relentless improvement.
There’s That Daunting F-Word Again
No, not that f-word. The easiest f-word to say yet the hardest to actually do: FOCUS. When someone asked about Operation Warp Speed's secret sauce, leader Paul Mango didn't hesitate: "Focus. You could have asked anyone on the team what our goal was—from generals to the most junior staffers—and they'd all give you the same answer: deliver at least one safe and effective vaccine, manufactured at scale, before the end of the year."
Sound familiar? That's basically a textbook product mission statement — or what we used to call a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal), courtesy of Jim Collins. Clear, measurable, time-bound, and ambitious enough to get everyone's blood pumping.
The health crisis created focus by "taking the tangles of competing priorities and straightening them into a straight thread." But here's Klein and Thompson’s brilliant insight: crisis is a focusing mechanism, but leaders define what counts as a crisis. And leaders are the ones who choose to focus.
“Crisis is a focusing mechanism, but leaders define what counts as a crisis. And leaders are the ones who choose to focus.”
Most product organizations suffer from the exact opposite problem—so many competing priorities that meaningful projects either drag on forever, getting diluted with each committee review, or finally ship as yesterday's big idea while competitors have moved on to the next thing. We need leaders brave enough to declare what actually matters and disciplined enough to say no to everything else.
I think about this every time I'm in a meeting where someone says, "This is also really important." Sure, it might be. But if everything is important, then nothing is. We've all seen the corporate version of "Everything Everywhere All at Once," and spoiler alert: it doesn't end with saving the multiverse — it ends with mediocre results across the board. Real progress happens when you pick your battles and fight them with everything you've got.
Give People a Lens, Not a List
Klein wraps up with something that made me want to highlight the entire page: instead of rushing toward predetermined solutions, we need "a new set of questions around which our politics should revolve: What is scarce that should be abundant? What is difficult to build that should be easy? What inventions do we need that we do not yet have?"
The environmental movement succeeded because it provided "more than a law—it was a lens" that completely transformed how we see the world. Notice the brilliance here: they didn't prescribe specific solutions or create detailed mandates. They gave people a simple framework for thinking differently, then trusted them to figure out what needed to change in their own contexts.
This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say we need to solve the right problems first. The magic isn't in having all the answers—it's in asking questions so clear and simple that they become a lens through which teams can see new possibilities. Questions that give people agency to identify what matters most and the confidence to act on it.
Instead of jumping straight to building features, what if we started with equally simple questions:
What human needs remain frustratingly underserved despite all our technological capabilities?
What friction exists in people's lives that we could actually eliminate?
What would abundance look like in our specific corner of the world, and how do we create it?
When you give teams this kind of lens rather than predetermined solutions, something beautiful happens: you get empowered organizations, increased accountability, and confident people making real impact. Less bureaucracy, more progress. That's when the real alchemy happens.
So, What Now?
Reading Abundance reminded me why I get so fired up about this work. The principles that enable societal progress—empowering smart people, maintaining long-term vision, focusing intensely on meaningful problems, iterating relentlessly—these aren't just nice ideas. They're the exact same forces that drive breakthrough product innovation.
The choice isn't between having big organizations or small ones, complex processes or simple ones. It's between creating cultures that enable progress and settling for ones that prevent it.
When we settle for mediocrity, when we decide innovation is too risky, when we accept 'good enough' instead of pursuing what's actually possible — we're stealing from the future something invaluable: the possibility of progress. It happens the moment we stop asking ourselves the tough questions: Are we actually solving the right problem? Have we even asked the right question yet?
The abundance mindset isn't about naive optimism or unlimited budgets. It's about making the strategic choice to solve problems that matter, empowering people who can actually solve them, and creating the conditions where breakthrough innovation feels inevitable rather than accidental.
After my morning cold brew and a good long think about all this, here's what I keep coming back to: The question isn't whether abundance is a product strategy. The question is how might we be brave enough to stop taking trips to Portugal, start empowering the right people, and create the conditions where consistently shipping impactful experiences becomes the norm rather than the exception? Because at the end of the day, that's what abundance really is—not unlimited resources, but unlimited possibility when smart people are focused on solving the right problems.
Three Key Takeaways:
1. Stop managing the present, start creating the future
The abundance mindset requires shifting from "how do we manage what we have" to "what could we create that doesn't exist yet?" Real competitive advantage comes from solving tomorrow's problems today, not perfecting yesterday's solutions.
2. True empowerment = agency + focus + patience
Empowered teams aren't just given permission to execute—they're trusted to identify the right problems and solve them without endless bureaucratic approval loops. Give them space to think together, pick meaningful battles, and commit to the long-term iteration that transforms good ideas into transformative products. When you combine agency with focus and patience, you’ll stop taking trips to Portugal.
3. The magic is in asking the right questions
The most powerful transformation happens when you provide simple frameworks for thinking differently rather than predetermined solutions. Instead of dictating what to build, ask questions so clear they become a lens for seeing new possibilities: What human needs remain underserved? What friction could we eliminate? What would abundance look like in our corner of the world?
Human Code Alchemy’s Field Notes explores the intersection of human behavior, technological possibility, and strategic innovation. Have observations you want to share? Hit me up — I'm always up for a good conversation about making things better! ~amber@humancodealchemy.com