To accurately reduce cost of goods sold (COGS), analyze total cost, including assembly labor, not just individual component prices. A more expensive prefabricated part, like a $1,500 wiring harness, can slash total costs by eliminating $6,000 worth of manual labor time, but requires looking beyond departmental budgets.

Don't design solely for the user. The best product opportunities lie at the nexus of what users truly need (not what they say they want), the company's established product principles, and its core business objectives.

The conventional wisdom that you must sacrifice one of quality, price, or speed is flawed. High-performance teams reject this trade-off, understanding that improving quality is the primary lever. Higher quality reduces rework and defects, which naturally leads to lower long-term costs and faster delivery, creating a virtuous cycle.

Consumerism is driven not by buying, but by buying low-quality items that fail and are discarded. The solution is creating superior, durable products that solve a user's problem permanently, eliminating the need for replacement.

A large customer support organization signals that a product is too complex, hard to onboard, or buggy. Instead of optimizing the support function, companies should focus on improving the product to the point where extensive human support becomes unnecessary.

To prevent engineers from focusing internally on technical purity (e.g., unnecessary refactoring), leaders must consistently frame all work in terms of its value to the customer. Even tech debt should be justified by its external impact, such as improving security or enabling future features.

Saying yes to numerous individual client features creates a 'complexity tax'. This hidden cost manifests as a bloated codebase, increased bugs, and high maintenance overhead, consuming engineering capacity and crippling the ability to innovate on the core product.

Creating feature "modes" (e.g., "uphill mode") instead of exposing core mechanics (e.g., gears) creates a "nightmare bicycle." It prevents users from developing a general framework, limiting their ability to handle novel situations or repair the system.

Historically, Pella addressed installation issues by trying to "fix the installer" with more training. Their successful innovation stemmed from a crucial mindset shift: the problem wasn't the user's process, but a product that was fundamentally designed incorrectly for their real-world needs.