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Scott Belsky: Adobe's Chief Strategist on navigating the creative Cambrian Explosion
00:46:07
We talk to Scott Belsky about how we might navigate the explosion of creative tools, why it might make sense to move toward a more “boundaryless” workflow, and how to manage emotional turbulence during challenging parts of our career.
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- [00:02]
Scott Belsky
In some ways, you could argue that empathy outperforms passion when it comes to product design. Sometimes as technologists, we're like, oh, if the technology can do that, we're just going to apply it. But people may not be ready for some of these things, especially with the ramp of capability right now. So I think empathy is a big part of actually driving utilization of all these new features and capabilities.
- [00:27]
Aaron Walter
We live in an era where it's easy to get overwhelmed by the pace of new technology. Designers, creatives, technologists. We have a wealth of tools at our disposal that people in our roles just a decade ago couldn't have even dreamed of. Yet it can be daunting to know where to focus our efforts. What new skills and workflows should we be learning to stay relevant? Scott Belsky, co founder of Behance and chief strategy officer at Adobe, calls the rapid spread of generative AI tools a Cambrian explosion, referring to an evolutionary event 500 million years ago when many new animal species appeared in a relatively short period of time. We talked to Scott about how we might navigate this explosion and why it might make sense to move toward a more boundaryless workflow. We also talked with Scott about his book the Messy Middle and how to manage emotional turbulence during challenging parts of our career. This is Design Better, where we explore creativity at the intersection of design and technology. Hi, I'm Aaron Walter. You can get ad free episodes, bonus content, discounts on our workshops, and access to our monthly AMAs with big names in design and tech by becoming a Design Better premium subscriber. It's also the best way to support our work here. Visit designbetterpodcast.com subscribe to learn more. We'll return to the conversation after this quick break. And now back to the show. Scott Belsky, welcome to Design Better.
- [02:16]
Scott Belsky
Thank you for having me.
- [02:17]
Aaron Walter
Yeah, it's such a pleasure to talk to you. We were just saying before we hit the record button how we've been playing with a lot of Adobe AI tools as of late, so we can chat about that a bit more in our conversation here. But we often like to start with a little bit of an origin story because it helps people just kind of understand where people are coming from and their perspective. Clearly you have a design background. You founded Behance, you know that was acquired by Adobe. But I don't know if a lot of people know that you also worked at Goldman Sachs, that you have an mba. So it's kind of a unique collection of skills. I wonder if you could tell us.
- [02:56]
Scott Belsky
A little bit about that MBA can be a dirty word in the creative industry.
- [03:00]
Aaron Walter
Can.
- [03:01]
Scott Belsky
But, you know, I've always felt like the people that I admire that are extremely creative, like their challenge is not coming up with more ideas, but executing them. I've always been interested in the sort of overlap between ideas and execution and what's in one's mind's eye and applies rails to it and puts it into process and makes things actually happen. My frustration throughout life, which has been a repeated source of inspiration for me, has been, you know, ideas lost that should have materialized. So, no, I think that the business side for me has always been the sort of the tool set to make ideas happen, whereas the ideas themselves. Like many others, I've always had tons of ideas and consider myself a very creative person. But I get frustrated unless I feel like I can put things into action.
- [03:49]
Aaron Walter
So after the Behance acquisition with Adobe, what guided your path there and how did you sort of see your role and the opportunity with that transition?
- [04:00]
Scott Belsky
Well, Behance was a seven year journey. It was five years of being a bootstrapped company and two years being a venture backed company. And all of the years focused on helping organize the creative world. It was an incredible journey. When we had the opportunity to join Adobe, the question of, okay, do we want to continue to go it alone or do we think that we could achieve something bigger and better as a combined company and would it be an amazing outcome for the team? And the answer to that was yes. And Adobe seemed like a really good fit for us, given the company was now in the creative cloud business and really wanted to have a closer connection with the actual community of its customers. And at the time, Behance was probably less than 2 million people, and now it's 55 million people on the platform showcasing their work. So I think it was the right choice. I would say that the product is better than it's ever been now as a result of all of the work and ingenuity that the team has poured into it over the years, you know, and I still hear stories of people, you know, getting found and discovered on Behance and getting hired and that sort of thing. But when I came into Adobe, I wasn't really sure. Am I going to just stick to Behance and kind of play it safe and do my time in a bigger company and then leave, or will I end up being inspired by a lot of the other problems and challenges, you know, around the organization that I might be able to help solve? And that's what happened. There were just so many opportunities to build services like creative cloud libraries that connect all of your assets across the products you use, or exploring early AI capabilities like Content Aware, Fill, and then later ones like Neural filters, and then even later ones like Firefly and generative AI. And it was amazing to me how when you have the workflows that people use to create and you take new technologies and find awful ways of infusing them, you can allow people to create more, like, better and faster. You know, it's all about time for all of us. So that's what's kept me around.
- [05:55]
Meredith Black
Scott, I've been reading your substack Implications, which has been really great. And a lot of the topics right now understandably revolve around generative AI. And you had an article or section of one of your writings last spring about navigating a cambrium explosion. For folks that not familiar with that term, I think it was around 540 million years ago. Ish. There's this great divergence in species and in the fossil record. You can see this just explosion of life. And I could see how it could relate to what's happening right now with this explosion of artificial life in some sense. So maybe you could talk a little bit about that. And in particular, there was a quote that Aaron and I both liked, which was that the faster your industry changes, the more you must ground yourself with customer empathy and natural human tendencies. And that, as designers, really resonated with us.
- [06:43]
Scott Belsky
Well, it's interesting. We tend to get very motivated by our passion for the solution to a problem and what we kind of see in our mind's eye as a solution. And then we are tempted to stay behind our screens and design that exactly as we see it. And oftentimes we're 30 degrees or so off of product market fit. And the question is why? And I believe that it's because we failed to have empathy with the person actually suffering the problem. And in some ways, you could argue that empathy outperforms passion when it comes to product design. Now, what does empathy mean? You know, it means it's not just asking the customer how they do the workflows and what they need from your product. It's more so observing them, you know, at work and understanding what are the things that are triggering them or making them feel good or making them feel bad. Like, what's the nuance of this product as it relates to how they appear to their peers or to their friends or to their boss? I mean, these are all aspects of a product that determine whether we want to use it or not. And yet they're not ones that can just be imagined or necessarily inferred. You have to kind of be shoulder to shoulder and feel the pain or the struggles or the aspirations of the customer to get the intuition to design the right thing. So now we're in this Cambrian explosion of sorts, where there are just so many new models and capabilities and apps and, you know, all these things. And I feel like every few weeks orientation changes about what's the best this and what's the best that, and it's hard to keep up with. And the only thing I believe our teams can go back to is just kind of understanding where our customer is. We've learned this the hard way in some instances. You know, what a technology is capable of and what a person is ready for are two entirely different questions. And sometimes as technologists, we're like, oh, if the technology can do that, we're just going to apply it. But people may not be ready for some of these things, especially with the ramp of capability right now. So I think empathy is a big part of actually driving utilization of all these new features and capabilities.
- [08:49]
Aaron Walter
What's that look like? When it's a brand new product, it's a brand new space, and we don't really have a core problem that we're aware of, but the problem is there. How do you think about that? In the team and the creative relationship.
- [09:03]
Scott Belsky
With a customer base, there's always a problem to solve. It's just a question of whether it's a known problem or an unknown problem. Right. Sometimes it's a technology that solves a problem that people didn't know they had. Right. For example, some productivity tools, you didn't actually know you were not being productive until this tool emerged. And you're like, oh my gosh, I was being so unproductive before I actually had this capability at my fingertips. So I believe that products need to appeal to basic human tendencies in order to be adopted at the onset. And I actually even take that back, you know, to the first mile experience that we all have with products. And my argument that I've, you know, shared before, that we're all in some ways lazy, vain and selfish in our first mile experience of any new product, we need to be met where we are before we, like, find a deeper value and build a relationship with a product that's new to us. And so the laziness, vanity, selfishness thing, that's appealing to very surface natural tendencies and desires. We have to look good to get more done with less time to be very prudent with our time. So those have to be taken into account. The other thing I would like to say though is sometimes products take off because of the things that they do that you didn't expect as opposed to doing the things you expected very well. Tesla is probably a great example where people used to talk about Tesla having all its Easter eggs and the rainbow road thing on the dashboard when you pull the stick a few times or whatever. I mean, these are great examples. I always wonder why more products don't incorporate things that people will talk about because they were things that they didn't expect to see. If we're all trying to achieve product led growth, which is ultimately people talking about or sharing products readily, I would imagine that's a very important lever to pull that we sometimes forget.
- [10:55]
Meredith Black
You had a more recent article that talked about the breakthroughs we're seeing on AI aren't necessarily getting mass consumer engagement or use at the moment, but for builders it's really making huge strides for the work that we do. And maybe that's kind of intuitive because you always find these groups of hackers or people that are willing to experiment with new things in the of builder community. But maybe you could build that thought out a little bit further for us.
- [11:21]
Scott Belsky
Well, consumer products are very psychological, whereas I think that building products are very logical. And it's if you can automatically screen your code for errors and automatically improve them, like who wouldn't do that spell check. Very few people turn off spell check like they want it, right? I think that tools for builders, creators, writers, that sort of thing. AI is just amazing for that world. And I think we're still in the early stages. Applications will be developed with natural language. I mean, essentially any software capability can now be generated by all of us just by describing what we want. It's pretty wild, but I haven't seen as many consumer applications beyond just chat ones that are just leveraging LLMs really work. I've seen a lot of apps, for example, where you have conversations with AI for various reasons, whether they're coaching or tutors or social apps where people kind of comment on your content but they're all fake people and whatever. And I just can't help but wonder that we want to feel like we are having an engaged experience with a human in consumer products. You know, you appreciate a movie because of the story behind it, because of the actors behind it, what you know about their lives. I mean, there's so much that we maybe don't readily realize or admit, but makes Us resonate with something because of the story and the craft and the meaning behind what we're doing. So a lot of these AI consumer apps lack any of that. They just don't have any human story or craft scarcity, real meaning. And they're made to sort of be like novelty or AI based engagement products. But for some reason there's something missing, I think for the consumers that's making them really click. It's something I'm thinking about. It was just an observation. I haven't seen many new consumer apps emerge as much as the building the picks and shovels.
- [13:13]
Aaron Walter
I want to rewind a little bit to your origin story. We talked about how your skills are a hybrid in a unique way and you've written about boundaryless work where designers and developers can move between spaces without territorialism. And it's my observation that, you know, some of the people that I have worked with who have been the best product designers, the most effective at making really great things that people want, they are the ones who cross the boundaries very fluidly. And yet so many companies, especially as a company scales, they don't really permit that or they don't encourage that. I'm curious, from your perspective, why isn't that a more common phenomenon?
- [14:00]
Scott Belsky
The best teams that I've ever worked with had, you know, what I've come to call collapsed talent stacks, where you have tighter conduits in the form of an actual brain that does two critical functions, engineering and design, or design and copy or whatever. It's just, you know, it breaks down any of the lossiness in the process. And finding those people and empowering them to do their greatest work is what of the best things you can do as a leader of a new product especially? You're right. As companies scale their departments and you know, there's all sorts of things that happen that make it harder for people to work like super tightly together. I do think that modern companies have come back with this notion of the squad finding a very tight knit group of people who are all the functions represented on a tight squad and they operate together. Hopefully they sit together, hopefully they get to know each other really well. You know, that sort of thing. There's also a cultural thing about whether companies specifically for design are willing to be like design driven or design led or not. What that term means to me is three things, I guess. Number one, basically the ratio of designers to PMs and engineers is healthy. Number two is that designers are always present at the table and ultimately put their stamp of approval on anything that Ships at a leadership level. And then number three is that the design work, the prototype leads the process, the design. A lot of the design work is done up front. It's not like an order to do this and then it's just handed over and built like it's design is done up front. But then it's constantly the standard for what we're trying to build. And ultimately it's the bar that the actual product work has to clear. That's just the best practice that many companies struggle to employ. But to your point, I mean, having these folks work together tightly, you know, that's a hack, right? And how can you achieve that? I mean, squads is the best way I've found in big companies. Collapsing the stack as much as you can always helps in smaller businesses as well.
- [15:56]
Meredith Black
Scott, if you're listening to this and you're earlier in your career and you're trying to prepare yourself for these roles where the disciplines are more blurred, what advice would you have for somebody like that that's a little younger? And also if you're a manager and you want to just empower your ICs and your employees to work in this way, what are your thoughts there?
- [16:15]
Scott Belsky
I think it's hard to have a mastery in all of these skill sets that we're discussing, but to be able to speak the language of them I think is really helpful and makes brings you half of the way there. An engineer that can actually design and has some basic design skills, you know, has empathy for their colleague, but also has just natural intuition that will really serve them in their role. You know, being a great writer, designers I've worked with who are also great writers, it's an amazing thing when some of the intuition around what the copy should be happens at the moment of the design, of the experience, because it's part of the experience, it's part of the design. Like why should it be done by somebody else who's out of the moment without the context of where the user is? What I would want to advise someone who's starting their career is first of all, develop a curiosity for the different disciplines of making. Try to take some basic classes or online things that give you some sort of introductory to basic principles so you can speak the language of whether it be coding, how a stack is sort of architected for a technology product. If you're going into that world, developing some good writing skills, becoming interested in that space, I just think that these are really helpful, practical skills that allow you to get those benefits that we're talking about.
- [17:34]
Aaron Walter
We'll return to the conversation after this quick break.
- [17:42]
Eli Woolery
Hey there. I'm Meredith Black, co founder of Design Ops assembly and formerly of Pinterest and Figma. I co host a podcast called Reconsidering alongside two of the design world's most respected voices, Bob Baxley, formerly of Apple and Pinterest, and Aaron Walter, co host of this very podcast Design Better. Reconsidering is a show about looking at the big questions and challenges that we face in everyday life. With a fresh perspective. We dive into topics like building a fulfilling career, navigating tough conversations, making meaningful friendships as adults, and even handling life's biggest transitions like illness and loss. We bring in authors and experts to provide actionable advice and thoughtful guidance to help us all develop the skills needed to thrive as well rounded and healthy adults. We spoke with New York Times bestselling author and TED speaker Dan Pink on the power of regret and how we can make smarter decisions to deepen our sense of of meaning and purpose. And Tina Roth Eisenberg, the founder of Creative Mornings, joined us live to talk about the importance of creating community and friendships. It turns out it has a huge impact on longevity and the quality of your life. And we spoke with MIT professor of philosophy and best selling author Kieran Setia about facing life's inevitable hardships in which ancient philosophers can teach us about living the good life. We explore so many topics and we'd love for you to give the Reconstruction Reconsidering Podcast to Listen Listen and subscribe@reconsidering.org that's reconsidering.org or find us wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:05]
E
Reconsidering.org Design Better is supported by Masterclass.
- [19:10]
Aaron Walter
At the start of each year, I.
- [19:11]
E
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Aaron Walter
Say I am dressing pretty sharp these days.
- [19:34]
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- [21:32]
Aaron Walter
That's it.
- [21:33]
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It's kind of amazing.
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- [22:13]
Aaron Walter
And now back to the show. Let's talk about some of your writing. Your most recent book is called Making Ideas Happen and you sort of alluded to this that there's creative work, lots of ideas, and so many ideas fall on the floor because they aren't turned into something they're not executed upon. There's lots of great examples of Xerox PARC innovating, doing great things, but until Steve Jobs and Apple sort of saw those things and then operationalized those things and brought them together, they couldn't be anything of significant impact. One of the things that stood out for us in making ideas happen is this idea of organization in the creative process. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [23:04]
Scott Belsky
Yeah. That book was done really around a lot of research of especially productive creative teams. And what I was interested in is why are some teams so prolific and so productive and other artists or creative teams really struggle to get anything out the door? You know, I don't think it had anything to do with the quality of ideas or the creativity. It had to do with something else. You know, and there's a lot in there about the actual structures and processes or divide and conquer partnerships. Like there were all just sorts of different mechanisms. But the common theme of these especially productive creative teams is that they really valued organization and they kind of recognized that organization times ideas equals impact. And if you have zero organization and all the best ideas in the world, you'll have no impact. If you tinker the equations a little bit, even if your ideas are not as good, but you have some really good organization around them, you can really have quite an impact with your ideas. And that really struck me. So I went out to start to understand what the culture of taking action and having a bias towards action meant within creative teams. You know, how they would practice that, the tools they would use, the mechanisms that encouraged people to feel accountable. You know, people oftentimes they don't know what to do first every day. And leveraging this tool of merchandising to get people to focus on the things that matter most. You know, it's funny, we all spend money on marketing products to get people to buy them and use them, but we don't really use the same tools to get people to do things in our teams. Like things are hidden on spreadsheets or on lists somewhere. But merchandising is actually a very effective way that a lot of these teams would get people focused on the few things that matter most anyways. Long laundry list. But organization, I think is a competitive advantage of creative people that ultimately are successful. And I think that's why I felt it needed to be discussed.
- [24:55]
Aaron Walter
Were there any teams in particular that you researched that kind of came up and you thought, okay, this is perfect example, there are many.
- [25:04]
Scott Belsky
And that book was written quite a while ago. But I remember chronicling some artists or writers like James Patterson. This is someone who has written so many novels, he runs a factory of writers. Maybe an example of someone who's maybe compromised a little bit on the genuine new idea front, but has over index on an organization and yields a tremendous impact and outcome. If you're a literary critic, you might have opinions of the work, but nevertheless, like prolific without dispute. And how does this person sort of empower his team and have a cadence of being able to impact the plots and the sort of general outlines, but have support over the execution? And there were some people like that where I was like, wow, that's unlike anything I've ever seen.
- [25:50]
Meredith Black
Could you talk also a little bit more about the merchandising idea and what kind of artifacts might that entail? Or examples of those?
- [25:58]
Scott Belsky
The simple metaphor, you know, was if you're working on a particular project or task, you know, if I put a post it note on your computer screen every single morning with that one task I hope you complete, you're more likely to complete it, right? Because it's intrusive and it's like big in your face and it's coming from one of your colleagues. I think actually that the mechanism of prioritization by natural selection, like the things that we nag each other about, the things that we surface to each other, actually has a purpose in prioritization in an organization. And a healthy organization, like some might call that nagging, but it actually is like, it's helpful to have people around you, especially as our creative whims and like going down tunnels that aren't necessary or lead to nowhere or aren't productive. Like that mechanism of a culture of people around you kind of nagging you a little bit. A lot of people swore on the benefit of that, which I thought was interesting and relates to this notion of merchandising. But also just some of the best program managers, like the people who are just helping things move, they'll devise mechanisms, whether it's a daily email with funny stuff that people actually read. There's all kinds of tools you can use to get people to actually focus on the work that needs to be done and where you're actually at in the process.
- [27:11]
Aaron Walter
Is there a pushback? Is there ever a risk of over operationalizing where the creative process maybe gets stifled because of operations? Is that something you've seen?
- [27:23]
Scott Belsky
It's all about a balance. I like to kind of boil it down to the doers and the dreamers, even though that's a very like blunt generalization of anyone. But in essence, we all have a bias towards either doing or dreaming. And these people can sometimes be at odds, right? The dreamer goes to bed at night thinking about what new things they can introduce to the project or the piece of work or Whatever. The next day, the doer goes to bed at night hoping that there's no surprises and that nothing comes up that isn't already planned and expected, so they're already diametrically opposed to one another. And then there's a process where the doer and the dreamer are kind of like, you know, hopefully challenging each other and getting the right amount done. If you have a organization that only empowers the doer, right, then the dreamers quit or they never actually can materialize what they have in their mind's eye. I think the healthy thing to do is to have an immune system in every team that is on a regular basis managed by the doer, but on a periodic basis suppressed for the dreamer to take hold. Much like an organ transplant, the doctor suppresses your immune system so you can take on literally a new organ. And so that's a pragmatic way of thinking about it, right? I mean, the doer needs to be managing this immune system because so many ideas can get us over budget or off track and can really compromise our impact ultimately. But there are times when you're problem solving, when you're coming up with something new, where you have a cycle where the doer needs to be suppressed and the dreamer needs to be able to do their thing. It's managing that chemistry that is the puzzle.
- [28:54]
Meredith Black
You have another book called the Messy Middle, and part of that you talk about managing emotional turbulence. And I'm sure in a career that runs through startups and a large organization like Adobe, you've run into your share of challenging passages. How do you manage your own emotions during those periods?
- [29:11]
Scott Belsky
Team has been always a very big part of it for me. You know, the people you're along for the ride with, that's what determines whether you can stick together long enough to figure it out. And by the way, I think that's the ultimate secret sauce of successful startups is just people who stuck together long enough. Now the question is, how do you stick together very long when you have fits and starts and you fail to get product market fit and you run out of money and all these other things that are about liable to happen along the way? A lot of that comes down to culture, you know, in a shared commitment and the end result, conviction, you know, and whether it's building or not based on what you're learning. You know, sometimes you're gaining conviction in the result, in the solution, even though the things you're trying are still not working. And that means you have to stick with it. But if you are Losing conviction based on all your learning by trying then you should not stick with it. Right. So in my experience, what has helped me in the most volatile periods is just a team that, you know, shares a goal and a culture where we genuinely enjoy being together enough where we'll still be together even if things aren't really working.
- [30:18]
Aaron Walter
Do you have any personal methods that you use to sort of like manage stress level? There's kind of a point in one's career as you reach higher and higher levels that it gets pretty stressful sometimes.
- [30:32]
Scott Belsky
My mechanisms are, number one, I try to run every morning a little bit clears my mind and it has an impact on my body. That is important I think for stress. Number two is I do try to preserve what I call windows of non stimulation. In my day I'll hold a little block and I'm not allowed to look in my email. I'm not allowed to look at any of the inboxes coming into my life from around me. I am only allowed to focus on a list of things that I feel are important over the long term. And it's during that period of time also where I will sometimes read, you know, I will read a report, I will read a PDF I had held for a while. I'll read a book that I'm reading. It's a really interesting way to break the cadence of an otherwise like overwhelming inputs, inputs, inputs type of day. But we have to be very proactive in holding those windows of non simulation and sometimes they get taken away from me. That's what I do.
- [31:26]
Meredith Black
Scott, do you also block out time where if you have the creative work that you need to do for this is something that I think Aaron and I do on our own calendars is find times where we just block out any kind of meetings or other extraneous stuff. So you have that focus time to work on deeper creative projects?
- [31:42]
Scott Belsky
Yeah, I mean one of my creative projects these days is this implications newsletter where I give myself this exercise of synthesizing a lot of the things that made me think the most in meetings I was in or in things I was reading and just write a once a month like a newsletter that sort of brings some of these things together. The exercise forces me to actually apply language to it and connect dots. It's just like a very healthy thing. I never have the time for it. Right. So to your point, it's always about, you know, blocking out a couple hours at one point to just synthesize. But it's amazing to me how often we just let our to do List dictate in our inbox, like, dictate our attention. You know, we're totally giving up our energy to the whims of others as opposed to controlling it. Now I'm getting more and more serious about that as I get busier and older, and I think it's something that I would like to tell my younger self to, like, take seriously more soon.
- [32:35]
Aaron Walter
So you talked earlier about merchandising that, you know, there's certain things you want to keep visible for teams. And in the messy middle, you talk a bit about vision and how we create that vision. How do you think about, you know, when you've got a vision for a product, keeping that front and center for the team. Because in debates and conversations day to day, it's super easy to sort of creep off half a degree to the left, and before you know it, you're not going in the same direction that you intended.
- [33:08]
Scott Belsky
I always encourage the teams that I work with to have a slide in the beginning of every review deck that is called the Zen slide, you know, and the Zen slide states the Zen of this product. Like, what is it intended to really do? Not like a marketing description, but really like, what is the Zen of this product? It's important in front of every presentation because then you kind of jump into some part and you're reviewing some feature set or some aspect and you're starting to make decisions without remembering what is the end of this product. Is this to help people win clients? Is this to help people tell their story? Is this to help people brainstorm and come up with a better idea that they want to execute in another product? Those sorts of stakes in the ground I find pretty useful, I think. The other thing is, I like to say in every product review, in every screen that you look at, there are three questions you should always ask yourself. How did I get here? What do I do now and what do I do next? And it's a great way of testing the object model of a product. You know, is it clear how to get home? If I got lost, how do I know where to go back to? What am I supposed to do now? Is it clear, like, which action is most important than all the actions I could choose from? If they all look the same, then I have this anxiety as a new user, like, what am I supposed to do, most likely? And then where do I go next? Like, if it's unclear, like, what's the progress in my journey? I start to get anxious. You know, those sorts of questions to me at every moment of product review you know, help ensure that you're synthesizing like an end to end product experience that matters. Now listen, like Adobe has a lot of very complicated products for very, you know, experienced professionals. But as we've gotten into new products like Adobe Express for example, it's been really important to ask this question in product reviews because they're intended for everyone to be able to use them. If you're a designer who wants to be able to animate something, you don't want to learn some very complicated animation program, you should be able to come to Adobe Express and just do it right. That's I think any sort of consumer oriented product especially, but even other products for bigger companies, you know, enterprises and that you need to be asking that question to build a great product.
- [35:18]
Meredith Black
There's another point in the book the Messy Middle where you talk about embracing pain. I'm a surfer, as you probably may tell from the surfboard in my background and the hat I'm wearing. And just recently our, you know, seasonal swell came in and we had some really good serve from the first day out my rail aboard to my ribs and I don't think I broke anything, but it's been really painful. But I've just found like dealing with it and getting out there and I just feel so good afterwards, it makes it worth it. And I'm just wondering for you, are there lessons that you take maybe from your running, which at least for me it can be painful sometimes that help you accommodate, you know, that pain that you might face if you're trying to launch a new product or do a startup?
- [35:55]
Scott Belsky
Yeah, I mean, I identify with that a lot. When I feel like I'm doing a really hard thing, I simultaneously feel like I'm doing something special. And in building products, whenever we hit a wall, there is a side of me that's like, oh, I'm happy that we hit this wall because if we overcome it, you know, that's many more people who won't be able to like that differentiates this product in market. So you want hard stuff because it means that whatever you're building will have some lasting to it, some power to it. Similarly, just personally running is an area where I like to push myself. And in some ways by pushing through my own mental barriers, oftentimes pain is involved. In some ways I'm building a muscle that I can leverage in other parts of my life. So I'm sure you identify with this like, you know, whatever you overcome and teach yourself you can do in surfing. It's like a transferable Muscle that you can bring to other parts of your.
- [36:52]
Aaron Walter
Life that you're daunted by and your role at Adobe. There's sort of a contradiction. I'm curious how you think about it. There's focusing on strategy, defining strategy for the company, and many teams. But then there's also emerging products and looking to the future. So there's a now focus and a later focus. I think probably many people could put their head into what a now mentality looks like. It looks like okrs and communication and meetings and decks and so forth. But how do you think about what the future looks like, especially at this crossroads that we find ourselves and Adobe at a very key point in its history? How are you looking at what might the future look like in five years? Because it could look very different than today.
- [37:40]
Scott Belsky
I think there's two parts of this. One part is identifying what has momentum. One humbling thing I've learned as a product builder that always wants to build something new, that reaches escape velocity is that momentum is its own kind of product. Like momentum has its own advantage, right? And sounds obvious, I guess. Of course it's moving, but it's hard to compete with momentum. There actually are so many products that are probably not so great that have momentum and they just win anyways because they had momentum. So part of strategy is understanding what has momentum in what user preferences have momentum. Like people are using YouTube now, and that's growing so fast that YouTube's going to be increasingly important. Doesn't matter if there's a better site or option around. YouTube's just going to be more important. So as a strategist, you have to really understand and have a really great appreciation for the present and what has momentum now and what's real and what's working now. You also simultaneously have to have a deep curiosity about the edges that may someday become the center. Now, the crazy thing about edges is they all seem a little strange, right? It's not exactly in the zeitgeist. It's not exactly so popular. Five years ago, one of those edges for us at Adobe was 3D. 3D was sort of something that people who knew math would do and you kind of had to understand physics and stuff to make things in 3D. But we felt like because of the democratization of gaming to some extent, the increased use of 3D assets for 2D purposes and illustrations and branding and graphic design, the advent of virtual reality, and the possible future of augmented reality and immersive experiences, that 3D was going to be something very important, if not the center in the future. So fast forward, we do have an incredible 3D and immersive business now of products that are used to make 3D objects look photorealistic with textures and materials and that sort of thing. And we're building AR tools and that sort of thing. But it's still an edge. It's still not really center. But if in 2030 we're all walking around with glasses and that's the new iPhone, and every creation that any of us makes is three dimensional by default, then these 3D products are going to be as important as Photoshop. So it's important to socialize these edges that make somebody become the center and actually have meetings with a team in the strategy organization called Edges. And what we do is we just discuss these edges that may or may not become the center as an attempt to socialize the possibilities with ourselves.
- [40:18]
Meredith Black
There's another article you wrote about, or part of it was about the meaning economy versus the creator economy. And for those of us in our audience who may be in that creator economy track and are curious, like, where's this heading now that AI generates so much content? How can I still stand out? And a big part of that, as you say, is about developing taste and being able to curate. Aaron wrote an article about this recently for our newsletter, and there's also a great clip from Ira Glass about that gap between the taste you have and how you execute on it, depending on how experienced you are. But you mentioned this, and I was just curious because I wasn't sure what you meant by it exactly, but it sounded interesting. Taste development tools. What are the kinds of tools you see that might help somebody develop their taste?
- [41:04]
Scott Belsky
That's a great question. I think we're all kind of trying to understand now, right? Where does taste come from? If content will be created infinitely? Right. And we'll all be inundated with personalized content constantly from brands. Everyone's going to flood the zone because they can. What's going to actually engage us is probably less so the engagement of the content or how, like, crazy it is, and more so the meaning of it. I think we're going to be craving story craft and meaning more than ever before. As a response to the deluge. Just like when shoes become commoditized and we all start buying designer shoes or branded shoes like Nike or whatever, like anything that becomes commoditized to some extent, we end up like craving a more scarce version, a more thoughtful, more tasteful version. And if that's happened with every product that's ever been commoditized. Now that content is being commoditized, which it has never been before because it's always taken a human to write everything. But now that computers can write and make content, like the same thing's gonna happen. So a creative professional needs to rise to that occasion. Like, it just means that you need to create a better, more special shoe with a story behind it and a brand that people resonate with. And then they will pay 100x what they could pay to get that better shoe. Like, you know, I'm not bearish on creativity. I just believe that we're only focusing on the floor going down. We're not focused on the ceiling going up. And that is what we're all capable of with some of these new tools as well. So taste is a huge part of it. Of course, whenever I talk to great photographers, sometimes they'll admit to me that their secret is just taking a lot of photos and picking the right one. That's taste. It's knowing which one with the right shadow, with the right lighting, you know, which one is perfect. That's always going to be taste. Right? And I have no idea where it comes from. I'm sure it's our upbringing, it's our. All of our inputs, everything we've exposed ourselves to, the history we've lived, art we've consumed, like all that stuff. We need to continue doing that to build our eye. I think we also could conceivably have some tools, though, that help us aggregate the things that are interesting to us and start to mix them together, maybe even using tools like AI. This is something we're exploring at Adobe now. You know, I think it's something that we're going to start seeing these new concept development tools emerge that help someone at first diverge across many options and then increasingly converge around a particular approach that they might want to then take in Illustrator or Photoshop or another product like that. I think it's a huge opportunity and I think humans are going to want it.
- [43:32]
Aaron Walter
Scott, what are you reading? Watching, listening to that has your wheels turning.
- [43:37]
Scott Belsky
Enjoyed Rick Rubin's book. I recently read that. Love that. I'm reading some of Carlo Rovelli's books, really just about the joy of physics. You know, I always love kind of understanding how time works. I feel like you almost get a new understanding of the dimension of the world in which we live with some of these books by physicists. You know, I'm trying to push myself to listen to new music. I wish I listened to more podcasts. I just don't have the time.
- [44:03]
Meredith Black
Maybe on your run.
- [44:03]
Aaron Walter
You got that?
- [44:04]
Meredith Black
Yeah. Throw it on.
- [44:06]
Scott Belsky
That's when I clear my head.
- [44:09]
Aaron Walter
That's great, Faith. Fantastic. Well, thanks so much for joining us on the show. Where can people learn more about you and what you're thinking about?
- [44:17]
Scott Belsky
Well, listen, thank you both for having me, but also, more importantly, just for this podcast and its existence and all the conversations and guests you've had. It's just good for the community. My writing's@imPLICATIONS.com and I'm just Ottbelsky on your platform of choice.
- [44:32]
Aaron Walter
Fantastic. Scott, thanks so much for joining us.
- [44:35]
Scott Belsky
Thank you for having me, guys.
- [44:37]
Eli Woolery
Foreign.
- [44:41]
Aaron Walter
This episode was produced by Eli Woolery and me, Aaron Walter, with engineering and production support from Brian Paik of Pacific Audio. If you found this episode useful, we hope that you'll leave us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to finer shows. Or simply drop a link to the show in your team slack channel designbetterpodcast.com it'll really help others discover the show. Until next time.