10 Innovation Articles from May 2025

I Documented Every Founder Mistake for 3 Years — Here’s the Pattern – Marketing Magic

• “Many founders think they’re “customer obsessed,” but they’re actually product obsessed. I’ve interviewed hundreds of failed founders, and most couldn’t answer basic questions about their customers: 1) What keeps them up at night?  2) What do they do before trying your solution?  3) What specific language do they use to describe their problem? Instead, they talked endlessly about features and technical challenges. The successful founders weren’t necessarily smarter — they just spent their first months actually talking to people. Not to pitch, but to listen. They had conversations with potential customers before writing a single line of code. These founders could tell me exactly why people bought their product, using the customer’s exact words. This isn’t rocket science, but it’s shockingly rare.”

The Inflatable Man – Austin Kleon [short video]

• “The Inflatable Man” is a metaphor Meghan came up with on one of our morning walks. I thought maybe there was an essay or a newsletter in it, and went looking for them around town. Once I shot this footage, I decided to make a Weird Little Something out of it. I believe we should all make Weird Little Somethings once in a while.

Feedback is the Moat – Exponential View 

• “Startups win not by having a moat, but by continuously moating – compounding advantages in a loop faster than anyone else. That’s why OpenAI just paid $3 billion for Windsurf: not to sell more coding assistants, but to
  control the loop where developers give real feedbac on AI-generated code. Windsurf routes user prompts through rival models as well as GPT-4o, then attaches satisfaction scores and follow-up actions. Whoever controls that loop gets the metadata moat that matters – how humans actually debug, refactor and accept suggestions.”

What Fully Automated Firms Will Look Like – Dwarkesh Podcast 

• Everyone is sleeping on the collective advantages AIs will have, which have nothing to do with raw IQ but rather with the fact that they are digital—they can be copied, distilled, merged, scaled, and evolved in ways human simply can’t.

Next Four Innovation Articles

11 Innovation Articles from April 2025 – Inside Outside Innovation 

• Check out 11 of the most read innovation articles by Inside Outside Innovation members.

Make Product Management Fun Again with AI Agents – Tap Raviv in Lenny’s Newsletter 

• Here’s a fantastic step-by-step guide to getting started with AI Agents… “After interviewing founders of AI agent platforms, running numerous usability sessions with PMs building their first agents, and gathering insights from a
  hands-on workshop 76(8.2%) for over 5,000 product managers, I’ve compiled their collective wisdom. This post shares their insights on what works—and what doesn’t—in the real world. We’re first going to learn how to build an AI agent, hands-on. Then I’ll share a unified framework for any PM to plan their second (and third) agent. We’ll cover best practices, pitfalls, powers, and constraints.”

5 Questions: Tendayi Viki on Building Innovation Momentum Without the Struggle – Robyn Bolton

• “There’s so much *efforting* in corporate transformation. All the chasing, tracking, nudging, following up. “Have they responded to the email? Did you call them?” All that pressure to push, to prove. But it reminds me of this Malcolm Gladwell podcast, Relax and Win, about San Jose State sprinters. Their coach taught them that to run their fastest, they had to stay relaxed. When you tense up, you actually slow down. Innovation works the same way. Don’t force it. Build momentum. Let it grow. And trust it once it’s moving.”

The Critical Difference Between Entrepreneurs and Everyone Else – Aaron Dinin

• “I’ve worked with enough founders to know that the ones who build meaningful things aren’t the ones who follow the rules perfectly. They’re the ones who find the rules constraining and start looking for better ones. They don’t wait for approval. They don’t wait for a perfect moment. They don’t wait for a green light from a professor, a boss, an investor, or even a customer. They decide something matters, and then they start working on it. And they do it because building something new — especially something that hasn’t existed before — means choosing to act when no one is asking you to.”

Final Two Articles

For Recognition Systems To Succeed: Reward Exploration And Innovation – Forbes / Diane Hamilton 

• “Innovation often starts with a question. “What if we tried this?” “Why are we doing it this way?” “Is there a better solution?” These simple yet powerful moments of curiosity spark the ideas that reshape industries. But here’s the problem: most workplaces aren’t designed to reward those moments. Instead, they celebrate big, visible wins, leaving the quieter, curiosity-driven efforts undervalued. When curiosity isn’t recognized, employees stop asking questions. They stick to what’s safe. The result? Missed opportunities,
  disengaged teams 13(2.8%), and organizations stuck in neutral while their competitors speed ahead. If you’re a leader who wants to stay relevant, it’s time to rethink how your organization rewards curiosity—and create a culture where exploration isn’t just encouraged but expected.”

AIs Shouldn’t Be Engineered for Engagement – VOX 

• “It matters a great deal precisely what AI companies are trying to target as they train their models. If they’re targeting user engagement above all — which they may need to recoup the billions in investment they’ve taken in
  — we’re likely to get a whole lot of highly addictive, highly dishonest models, talking daily to billions of people, with no concern for their wellbeing or for the broader consequences for the world… If the AI tells you what you want to hear, it will instead exacerbate the dangerous echo chambers of modern American politics and culture, dividing us even further in what we hear about, talk about, and believe. That’s not the only worrying thing, though. Another concern is the definitive evidence that OpenAI is putting a lot of work into making the model fun and rewarding at the expense of making it truthful or helpful to the user.”

Are you an Innovation Leader?  Sign up Today

Check out our Innovation Article Databases  for curated innovation articles from 2025.

Inside Outside Innovation’s free weekly newsletter helps leaders in innovation understand the collision of tech, markets, mindsets, and networks.   SIGN UP

For more innovations resources, check out IO’s new Innovation Tools Database, Innovation Book Database, Innovation Podcast Database, and Innovation Video Database.