ALEX'S APPLIED ESSAYS
Ideas to think with, tools to act with.
#1
THINKING DESIGN / APPLIED ESSAY
Expertise is not a product. Yet
The 10-Point Value Radar Framework
A practical framework for seeing where your intellectual product already creates value and where you could design more of it.
- 7min to read
- 15-20min to read and reflect
- 30min to practice
- 50min to apply to a real product
An intellectual product can work perfectly and still feel replaceable.
It can solve the problem, deliver what was promised, look professional and give people no particular reason to choose it, remember it, recommend it or care about it.
Value is not one thing. It can come from what something means, what it helps us notice, how carefully it is made, the perspective it introduces, the connections it creates or the experience it gives us.
The 10-Point Value Radar is a practical framework for making these different sources of value visible and using them to redesign products, services, learning experiences, content, methods and solutions.
Value is not one thing. It can come from what something means, what it helps us notice, how carefully it is made, the perspective it introduces, the connections it creates or the experience it gives us.
The 10-Point Value Radar is a practical framework for making these different sources of value visible and using them to redesign products, services, learning experiences, content, methods and solutions.
Article's Title
Working definition
An intellectual product is a structured and usable embodiment of expertise, experience or original thinking that enables another person to understand, decide, act, create or transform something differently.
It converts something largely invisible—
—into something another person can access, navigate, apply and potentially reproduce without constantly depending on the expert.
A shorter version:
An intellectual product is expertise transformed into a structured mechanism for producing value in someone else’s hands.
This last part matters. A book can transmit ideas. An intellectual product goes further: it gives those ideas an operational form.
An intellectual product is a structured and usable embodiment of expertise, experience or original thinking that enables another person to understand, decide, act, create or transform something differently.
It converts something largely invisible—
- lived experience;
- professional expertise;
- observations and discoveries;
- a distinctive way of thinking;
- accumulated patterns;
- cultural or interdisciplinary knowledge;
- an original interpretation;
—into something another person can access, navigate, apply and potentially reproduce without constantly depending on the expert.
A shorter version:
An intellectual product is expertise transformed into a structured mechanism for producing value in someone else’s hands.
This last part matters. A book can transmit ideas. An intellectual product goes further: it gives those ideas an operational form.
What makes it a product?
Expertise alone is not a product. Neither is content.
The transformation looks like this:
Expertise → extracted insight → structured system → usable experience → observable outcome
For something to qualify as an intellectual product, it normally needs five components:
Expertise alone is not a product. Neither is content.
The transformation looks like this:
Expertise → extracted insight → structured system → usable experience → observable outcome
For something to qualify as an intellectual product, it normally needs five components:
- Intellectual core
- The original idea, perspective, principle, model or combination of disciplines.
- Structure
- The architecture that organises the knowledge: stages, dimensions, categories, sequence, map or logic.
- Mechanism
- The way the product creates movement: questions, diagnosis, decisions, exercises, prompts, simulations or protocols.
- Form
- The interface through which people access it: cards, canvas, method, game, sprint, course, AI assistant, book, toolkit or licence.
- Result
- A change in understanding, capability, decision, behaviour, creation or performance.
Here there is a distinctive feature is hidden.
What can be an intellectual product?
The category is broader than courses and books.
Thinking products
Frameworks, models, taxonomies, canvases, maps, diagnostic systems, decision protocols.
They help people see and structure something.
Practice products
Exercises, card decks, workbooks, challenges, microlearning systems, guided experiments.
They help people develop a capability.
Experience products
Serious games, simulations, facilitated journeys, narrative experiences, interactive labs.
They make people discover or transform something through participation.
Decision products
Assessments, audits, scoring systems, recommendation engines, strategic tools.
They help people choose and act.
Transfer products
Methods, facilitator systems, certifications, licences, train-the-trainer programmes.
They allow other professionals to reproduce the creator’s approach.
Intelligent interfaces
AI assistants, conversational diagnostics, adaptive learning journeys and digital tools built around a proprietary method.
They make expertise accessible through interaction.
A single intellectual core can therefore become a full product system:
Thinking products
Frameworks, models, taxonomies, canvases, maps, diagnostic systems, decision protocols.
They help people see and structure something.
Practice products
Exercises, card decks, workbooks, challenges, microlearning systems, guided experiments.
They help people develop a capability.
Experience products
Serious games, simulations, facilitated journeys, narrative experiences, interactive labs.
They make people discover or transform something through participation.
Decision products
Assessments, audits, scoring systems, recommendation engines, strategic tools.
They help people choose and act.
Transfer products
Methods, facilitator systems, certifications, licences, train-the-trainer programmes.
They allow other professionals to reproduce the creator’s approach.
Intelligent interfaces
AI assistants, conversational diagnostics, adaptive learning journeys and digital tools built around a proprietary method.
They make expertise accessible through interaction.
A single intellectual core can therefore become a full product system:
flowchart TD
A["Intellectual core"] --> B["Self-use product"]
A --> C["Guided experience"]
A --> D["Professional tool"]
A --> E["Licence or certification"]
A --> F["AI interface"]Back to purity, back to simplicity
Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.
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1 - FROM “IS IT VALUABLE?” TO “HOW DOES IT CREATE VALUE?”
We tend to talk about value as if it were a single quantity.
Add more value.
Increase perceived value.
Create a valuable offer.
For sure an useful advice. Not particularly useful instructions. Adding value does not necessarily mean adding another feature, another module, another bonus or another 47-page PDF nobody asked for.
Add more value.
Increase perceived value.
Create a valuable offer.
For sure an useful advice. Not particularly useful instructions. Adding value does not necessarily mean adding another feature, another module, another bonus or another 47-page PDF nobody asked for.
“
Sometimes value increases because you remove something.
Sometimes because you connect the product to something people care about.
Sometimes because you reveal something they had never noticed.
Sometimes because you change the way they see a familiar problem.
Sometimes because the experience itself becomes memorable.
Sometimes because you connect the product to something people care about.
Sometimes because you reveal something they had never noticed.
Sometimes because you change the way they see a familiar problem.
Sometimes because the experience itself becomes memorable.
Thinking Design in motion
Let's go straight to the point and unlock the tool.
THINKING DESIGN TOOL
The 10-Point Value Radar
The 10-Point Value Radar separates value into ten design dimensions.
It can be used to diagnose an existing product, compare different versions of an offer, design something new, rethink a service, improve an experience or identify what actually makes your work distinctive.
- MeaningWhy does it matter?
- AttentionWhat does it help people notice?
- CareHow thoughtfully does it treat the person?
- PerspectiveWhat does it help them see differently?
- RelevanceWhy this, for this person, now?
- CraftHow well is it made?
- ConnectionWhat previously separate things does it bring together?
- ExperienceWhat can people live, feel, use or participate in?
- SurpriseWhat unexpected element creates meaningful effect?
- ContributionWhat becomes better because it exists?
- One ruleThe objective is not to score 10/10 everywhere.
- A perfectly round radar would probably tell us very little.
- Instead, we are looking for three things:
- your value signature — where you are already unusually strong;
- your value opportunities — where a deliberate change could make a difference;
- your irrelevant dimensions — things your product simply does not need.
2 - GOING INTO DETAILS
Let's open the radar.
Go through synthetic cards. Each contains a category purpose, description, and hands-on practice.
Purpose
To move a product from “What does it do?” toward “Why does this matter?”
What it means
Function explains usefulness. Meaning explains significance.
A notebook can store notes. Or it can become a place where someone develops the idea for their first business.
A course can transfer knowledge. Or it can help someone regain confidence in their ability to learn.
The object, service or content may remain essentially the same. What changes is its relationship to something larger: an aspiration, identity, belief, transition, ambition or purpose.
Meaning doesn't require a grand mission statement. It requires understanding what your product enables beyond its immediate function.
Question to Reader
If your product disappeared tomorrow, what meaningful possibility would disappear with it?
Small practice: The “So what?” ladder
Write what your product does. Then ask “So what?” five times.
Example:
It helps people structure their expertise. - So what?
They can explain what they know. - So what?
Other people can understand its value. - So what?
They can create opportunities from it. - So what? etc.
Look at where the answer becomes interesting. That is often where meaning begins.
To move a product from “What does it do?” toward “Why does this matter?”
What it means
Function explains usefulness. Meaning explains significance.
A notebook can store notes. Or it can become a place where someone develops the idea for their first business.
A course can transfer knowledge. Or it can help someone regain confidence in their ability to learn.
The object, service or content may remain essentially the same. What changes is its relationship to something larger: an aspiration, identity, belief, transition, ambition or purpose.
Meaning doesn't require a grand mission statement. It requires understanding what your product enables beyond its immediate function.
Question to Reader
If your product disappeared tomorrow, what meaningful possibility would disappear with it?
Small practice: The “So what?” ladder
Write what your product does. Then ask “So what?” five times.
Example:
It helps people structure their expertise. - So what?
They can explain what they know. - So what?
Other people can understand its value. - So what?
They can create opportunities from it. - So what? etc.
Look at where the answer becomes interesting. That is often where meaning begins.
Purpose
To create value through noticing.
What it means
We live surrounded by information. Scarcity has moved elsewhere: toward attention, interpretation and discernment.
A valuable product can help someone see something that was already there but remained invisible.
Question to Reader
What does my product help people notice that they would probably overlook without it?
Small practice: The invisible tree
Take the problem your product addresses and list:
3 things everyone notices
3 things experts notice
3 things almost nobody notices
Explore the third list. That is often where differentiation lives.
To create value through noticing.
What it means
We live surrounded by information. Scarcity has moved elsewhere: toward attention, interpretation and discernment.
A valuable product can help someone see something that was already there but remained invisible.
- A diagnostic reveals a hidden pattern.
- A photographer makes us notice an ordinary gesture.
- A consultant spots an assumption everyone else has accepted.
- A learning experience makes a participant suddenly recognize their own behaviour.
Question to Reader
What does my product help people notice that they would probably overlook without it?
Small practice: The invisible tree
Take the problem your product addresses and list:
3 things everyone notices
3 things experts notice
3 things almost nobody notices
Explore the third list. That is often where differentiation lives.
Purpose
To increase value through thoughtfulness and human sensitivity.
What it means
Care appears in details people may never explicitly mention.
Care asks us to stop designing for an abstract “customer” and imagine the actual human experience surrounding our product.
Question to Reader
Where could someone feel confused, ignored, uncomfortable, overwhelmed or unnecessarily frustrated?
Small practice: Walk beside them
Move through your product step by step:
before → beginning → during → difficulty → completion → after
At each stage ask, "What might this person be thinking or feeling here?"
Find one unnecessary friction and remove it.
To increase value through thoughtfulness and human sensitivity.
What it means
Care appears in details people may never explicitly mention.
- A confusing step has disappeared.
- An instruction arrives exactly when it is needed.
- A difficult conversation has been anticipated.
- The packaging is easy to open.
- A participant doesn't feel stupid when they don't understand something.
Care asks us to stop designing for an abstract “customer” and imagine the actual human experience surrounding our product.
Question to Reader
Where could someone feel confused, ignored, uncomfortable, overwhelmed or unnecessarily frustrated?
Small practice: Walk beside them
Move through your product step by step:
before → beginning → during → difficulty → completion → after
At each stage ask, "What might this person be thinking or feeling here?"
Find one unnecessary friction and remove it.
Purpose
To create value through reframing and interpretation.
What it means
Sometimes the most valuable thing you can give someone isn't an answer.
It's another way of looking at the question.
A problem described as lack of motivation produces one family of solutions.
Describe it as poorly designed friction and entirely different possibilities appear.
Perspective is especially powerful in knowledge products, consulting, strategy, education and creative work because a new frame can change what people subsequently notice, decide and do.
Question to Reader
What assumption about this problem could I challenge, reverse or reframe?
Small practice: Three lenses
Describe the same problem three times:
as your industry normally describes it
as another discipline might describe it
as its opposite
Example:
How do we get people to pay attention?
How do we make this impossible to ignore?
Why would ignoring this currently be the rational choice?
Notice which version opens new possibilities.
To create value through reframing and interpretation.
What it means
Sometimes the most valuable thing you can give someone isn't an answer.
It's another way of looking at the question.
A problem described as lack of motivation produces one family of solutions.
Describe it as poorly designed friction and entirely different possibilities appear.
Perspective is especially powerful in knowledge products, consulting, strategy, education and creative work because a new frame can change what people subsequently notice, decide and do.
Question to Reader
What assumption about this problem could I challenge, reverse or reframe?
Small practice: Three lenses
Describe the same problem three times:
as your industry normally describes it
as another discipline might describe it
as its opposite
Example:
How do we get people to pay attention?
How do we make this impossible to ignore?
Why would ignoring this currently be the rational choice?
Notice which version opens new possibilities.
Purpose
To connect an idea to a real person, context, need or moment.
What it means
Something can be brilliant and irrelevant.
Generic value says, "This could be useful."
Relevance says, "This is exactly what I need right now."
Relevance comes from context. The same solution can have radically different value depending on who encounters it, what they are trying to achieve and what is happening around them. The more precisely we understand that moment or transition period (the period where a person needs our product), the less we need to inflate the product itself.
Question to Reader
Why would this matter to this particular person in this particular situation right now?
Small practice: Replace "everyone"
Complete this sentence:
This is particularly valuable for ______
when they are trying to ______
but are facing ______
at the moment when ______.
If the first blank contains “everyone,” start again.
To connect an idea to a real person, context, need or moment.
What it means
Something can be brilliant and irrelevant.
Generic value says, "This could be useful."
Relevance says, "This is exactly what I need right now."
Relevance comes from context. The same solution can have radically different value depending on who encounters it, what they are trying to achieve and what is happening around them. The more precisely we understand that moment or transition period (the period where a person needs our product), the less we need to inflate the product itself.
Question to Reader
Why would this matter to this particular person in this particular situation right now?
Small practice: Replace "everyone"
Complete this sentence:
This is particularly valuable for ______
when they are trying to ______
but are facing ______
at the moment when ______.
If the first blank contains “everyone,” start again.
Purpose
To create value through quality of execution and mastery.
What it means
A brilliant concept can still produce a mediocre product.
Craft is what happens between idea and execution: structure, precision, language, materials, interaction, visual hierarchy, pacing, technical quality and dozens of seemingly minor decisions.
If Care asks, "How thoughtfully have we treated the person?".
Carft asks, "How well have we made the thing?"
This distinction matters.
Question to Reader
Where is the execution currently weaker than the idea behind it?
Small practice: Find the weakest seam
Choose five elements of your product:
content · structure · interaction · aesthetics · delivery
Score each from 1–10. Don't try to improve the strongest one.
Take the weakest and ask, "What would make this feel unmistakably well made?"
Make one visible improvement.
To create value through quality of execution and mastery.
What it means
A brilliant concept can still produce a mediocre product.
Craft is what happens between idea and execution: structure, precision, language, materials, interaction, visual hierarchy, pacing, technical quality and dozens of seemingly minor decisions.
If Care asks, "How thoughtfully have we treated the person?".
Carft asks, "How well have we made the thing?"
This distinction matters.
Question to Reader
Where is the execution currently weaker than the idea behind it?
Small practice: Find the weakest seam
Choose five elements of your product:
content · structure · interaction · aesthetics · delivery
Score each from 1–10. Don't try to improve the strongest one.
Take the weakest and ask, "What would make this feel unmistakably well made?"
Make one visible improvement.
Purpose
To create value through relationships between people, ideas, disciplines or elements.
What it means
Innovation frequently comes not from inventing another element but from connecting existing ones differently.
Question to Reader
What could I connect this with that normally belongs somewhere else?
Small practice: the unlikely neighbour
Write your product in the middle of a page. Around it, add five unrelated territories:
a discipline · an industry · an art form · a place · a ritual
Pick the least obvious one. Then ask, "If my product borrowed one principle from this world, what would change?"
To create value through relationships between people, ideas, disciplines or elements.
What it means
Innovation frequently comes not from inventing another element but from connecting existing ones differently.
- Psychology + game design.
- Education + cinema.
- Data + storytelling.
- A café + a bookstore.
- A product + a community.
Question to Reader
What could I connect this with that normally belongs somewhere else?
Small practice: the unlikely neighbour
Write your product in the middle of a page. Around it, add five unrelated territories:
a discipline · an industry · an art form · a place · a ritual
Pick the least obvious one. Then ask, "If my product borrowed one principle from this world, what would change?"
Purpose
To move people from passive reception toward action, sensation, interaction or participation.
What it means
Reading about swimming is not swimming.
Knowing is not necessarily experiencing.
Many products stop at information delivery even when their value could become much stronger through participation.
Experience asks what someone can do, feel, manipulate, choose, discover, test or influence.
Question to Reader
What could people experience here instead of merely being told about it?
Small practice: Replace one explanation
Find one thing your product currently explains.
Remove the explanation temporarily. Then ask, "How could someone discover this themselves?"
Turn it into a question, choice, experiment, challenge, simulation or action.
To move people from passive reception toward action, sensation, interaction or participation.
What it means
Reading about swimming is not swimming.
Knowing is not necessarily experiencing.
Many products stop at information delivery even when their value could become much stronger through participation.
Experience asks what someone can do, feel, manipulate, choose, discover, test or influence.
- A report becomes a diagnostic.
- A lecture becomes an investigation.
- A presentation becomes a decision game.
- A methodology becomes something people immediately try on their own problem.
Question to Reader
What could people experience here instead of merely being told about it?
Small practice: Replace one explanation
Find one thing your product currently explains.
Remove the explanation temporarily. Then ask, "How could someone discover this themselves?"
Turn it into a question, choice, experiment, challenge, simulation or action.
Purpose
To create attention, insight, emotion or memorability through an unexpected element.
What it means
Surprise is powerful as our brain reacts on every unexpected happening. It's also very easy to misuse. A random gimmick is unexpected. It isn't necessarily valuable.
Useful surprise changes something.
Question to Reader
What would people reasonably expect here and what valuable alternative could I give them instead?
Small practice: Break one expectation
Write down three conventions of your category:
That last condition matters.
To create attention, insight, emotion or memorability through an unexpected element.
What it means
Surprise is powerful as our brain reacts on every unexpected happening. It's also very easy to misuse. A random gimmick is unexpected. It isn't necessarily valuable.
Useful surprise changes something.
- It makes us laugh and therefore remember.
- It breaks a pattern and restores attention.
- It reveals an unexpected connection.
- It overturns an assumption.
- It gives more than we anticipated at precisely the right moment.
Question to Reader
What would people reasonably expect here and what valuable alternative could I give them instead?
Small practice: Break one expectation
Write down three conventions of your category:
- A course begins with theory.
- A consultant delivers a report.
- A conference starts with introductions.
That last condition matters.
Purpose
To examine the positive change left behind.
What it means
Contribution moves beyond transaction.
Someone buys something. Fine. What changes afterwards?
It simply asks us to look beyond consumption toward consequence.
Question to Reader
What becomes better because this product exists and people use it?
Small practice: Follow the ripple
Start with the immediate result of using your product. Then trace three consequences:
Product → person → behaviour → wider effect
Example:
Better facilitation tool
→ more confident facilitator
→ better conversations inside teams
→ better collective decisions.
The last two steps often reveal contribution that marketing descriptions completely miss.
To examine the positive change left behind.
What it means
Contribution moves beyond transaction.
Someone buys something. Fine. What changes afterwards?
- Perhaps they make better decisions.
- Share knowledge with others.
- Waste less.
- Become more capable.
- Build something that didn't previously exist.
- Improve a team, community, profession or environment.
It simply asks us to look beyond consumption toward consequence.
Question to Reader
What becomes better because this product exists and people use it?
Small practice: Follow the ripple
Start with the immediate result of using your product. Then trace three consequences:
Product → person → behaviour → wider effect
Example:
Better facilitation tool
→ more confident facilitator
→ better conversations inside teams
→ better collective decisions.
The last two steps often reveal contribution that marketing descriptions completely miss.
3 - TIME TO BUILD A CIRCLE
You've gone through the practices. Evaluate all value dimensions on a scale out of 10.
Once you've scored all ten dimensions, resist the obvious temptation. Don't start fixing every low number.
A product doesn't need to be meaningful, surprising, participatory, beautifully crafted, deeply connected and socially transformative all at once.
A product doesn't need to be meaningful, surprising, participatory, beautifully crafted, deeply connected and socially transformative all at once.
Some dimensions simply don't matter.
Instead, read the shape of your radar.
Instead, read the shape of your radar.
Your 2–3 strongest dimensions reveal your current Value Signature.
The dimensions that are weak but strategically interesting reveal Value Opportunities.
Some dimensions deserve an N/A because strengthening them would add complexity rather than value.
Then choose one or two opportunities and move from diagnosis to design:
What could I change in the actual product to move this dimension from 4 to 7?
Not what could you say about it. What could you change?
What could I change in the actual product to move this dimension from 4 to 7?
Not what could you say about it. What could you change?
“
That distinction turns the radar from a branding exercise into a product-design framework.
Creating more value doesn't always mean creating more.
And know exactly why.
Give it a try and Keep me posted; I am always curious to see your Value Radar takes and happy to think through the interesting bits with you. -;)
Yours, Alex D.
- Sometimes it means noticing more.
- Connecting differently.
- Removing friction.
- Changing perspective.
- Creating participation.
- Making one detail exceptionally well.
- Or designing the one unexpected thing that makes people think:
And know exactly why.
Give it a try and Keep me posted; I am always curious to see your Value Radar takes and happy to think through the interesting bits with you. -;)
Yours, Alex D.
“Ah. This is different.”
Alex Dedieu
Author, Founder Bold Corner
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