Episode 176: Harnessing the Power of Product Principles: A Conversation with Debbie Widjaja of Zero Gravity

In this episode of the Product Thinking podcast, host Melissa Perri welcomes Debbie Widjaja, Chief Product Officer of Zero Gravity, as a guest. 

The pair discuss Debbie's career journey and how her perspective on product management has evolved over time. Debbie shares her focus on creating products that bring a positive impact to the world and the importance of clear product principles. 

They also delve into the relationship between principles and strategy, the role of humility in product management, and the challenges of aligning investor expectations with a company's mission. Further to this, Debbie touches on the role of AI in product management and managing innovation in smaller companies. This exciting episode offers valuable insights into product management and the future of the field.

Debbie’s upbringing in Indonesia has had a profound impact on how she has shaped and evolved her career over the 13 years she has been working in product management. Ultimately, as she explains these formative times of her life, growing up without the internet has meant that Debbie has a deep appreciation for the absolutely transformative effect of technology to people’s day-to-day lives. As Debbie describes, her perspective is particularly wide because, having experienced the reality of that positive transformation, she also went on to see the other extreme while at Facebook, dealing with hate speech and misinformation. 

Wanting to work for companies that perform a social good has been central to many of the choices that Debbie has made in her career so far. And as a result, grasping a company’s principles is a particularly important task for her. How that intersects with strategy is a point that Debbie has some interesting thoughts on. Her view on the difference is that strategy tends to be more practical, with principles perhaps being longer-term and set in stone. As Debbie illustrates, strategy could change year on year, while principles need to be more consistent to be effective and worthwhile.

A company that could be categorized as performing social good, need not necessarily be a charity. In fact, Zero Gravity, Debbie’s company is a for-profit, and this makes the structure of the company's operations and finances quite interesting indeed. The clever aspect of Zero Gravity’s set-up is that the way they’ve monetized their work, is by partnering with other companies who are committed to hiring and nurturing socially mobile talents. This way, although the company can make money, every cent is to some extent working to achieve the larger mission.

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Previous guests include: Shruti Patel of US Bank, Steve Wilson of Contrast Security, Bethany Lyons of KAWA Analytics, Tanya Johnson Chief Product Officer at Auror, Tom Eisenmann of Harvard Business School, Stephanie Leue of Doodle, Jason Fried of 37signals, Hubert Palan of Productboard, Blake Samic of Stripe and Uber, Quincy Hunte of Amazon Web Services

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