Some systems get better when things go wrong.

That’s one of the most powerful ideas I took from “Antifragile”, which I’ve just finished reading, and I can’t stop thinking about how relevant it is to building products.

We spend a lot of time trying to reduce uncertainty (discovery, validation, research…) but no matter how much we plan, unexpected things still happen.

Sometimes because the design or functionality fails (e.g. a bug appears or a feature doesn’t perform the way we hoped), and other times because users interact with the product differently than we expected.

Normally, we try to fix the issue, or simply remove what didn’t work.

But what if those outcomes weren’t failures?

What if they were clues about how to make the product better?

A great example of this mindset in action is Netflix.

In the early days, buffering and connection issues were a big source of frustration for users.

Instead of just trying to improve streaming speed, they looked deeper into the problem.

They realised that if they could predict what users were likely to watch next, they could pre-load content in advance, reducing load times dramatically.

That information led to major investment in infrastructure and one of Netflix’s most iconic features: its recommendation engine.

A technical issue turned into a strategic asset, and a core part of the product experience.

Maybe the most valuable skill in product is not getting it right the first time, but knowing how to use what goes wrong to make it even better.

Have you ever turned something that didn’t go as planned into an advantage, in your product or in your career?