Aug 25, 2026 · 44 min · 9 segments
# Why 80% of Features Go Unused: Gary Cohen on Building the Right Thing The Meridian Point with Kumar Dattatreyan ## Episode overview Gary Cohen spent twenty years building a delivery machine that…
Gary CohenGuestKumar DattatreyanHostYou know, one of the things that in our prep conversation you said to me that kind of stuck, you tell leaders to embrace uncertainty.
What does that look like? You know, is it sort of like Yeah, me, I'll just stop there.
But yeah, so uncertainty is incredibly important because it's that presence of uncertainty that creates the opportunity for differentiation in the marketplace, right? If there's no uncertainty, then really the only differentiation comes from going from plan to delivery.
And if that's true, then maybe you're in a commodity business with shrinking profit margins.
But when there's a high level of uncertainty, the organizations that can reduce that uncertainty iteratively and systematically and most efficiently will wind up finding the best ideas, learn how to implement those ideas and do so faster than their
I suppose when things are uncertain, you should not be making big investments in product.
We should be making more exploratory investments to see if whatever idea you have is is viable before you invest lots of money in something that's uncertain.
Yeah, you certainly have to get very good at learning, right? And how do I reduce uncertainty in it, right? What's the most important, what's the one thing that can doom this opportunity, right, or this potential solution.
And then how do I quick, what's the quickest way for me to either validate that it's okay to go ahead or invalidate, you know, and
You know, one of the things that in our prep conversation you said to me that kind of stuck, you tell leaders to embrace uncertainty.
What does that look like? You know, is it sort of like Yeah, me, I'll just stop there.
But yeah, so uncertainty is incredibly important because it's that presence of uncertainty that creates the opportunity for differentiation in the marketplace, right? If there's no uncertainty, then really the only differentiation comes from going from plan to delivery.
And if that's true, then maybe you're in a commodity business with shrinking profit margins.
But when there's a high level of uncertainty, the organizations that can reduce that uncertainty iteratively and systematically and most efficiently will wind up finding the best ideas, learn how to implement those ideas and do so faster than their
I suppose when things are uncertain, you should not be making big investments in product.
We should be making more exploratory investments to see if whatever idea you have is is viable before you invest lots of money in something that's uncertain.
Yeah, you certainly have to get very good at learning, right? And how do I reduce uncertainty in it, right? What's the most important, what's the one thing that can doom this opportunity, right, or this potential solution.
And then how do I quick, what's the quickest way for me to either validate that it's okay to go ahead or invalidate, you know, and
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