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04Precedent · how it went for them

The situation“A stakeholder keeps changing their mind and I can't lock the scope.”

Leaders who made the same call — what each did, and how it went.

WorkedShouldn’t have been tried

Worked · Susan Wojcicki, YouTube, 2014–2020

When Susan Wojcicki became YouTube CEO in February 2014, the platform's governing principle had been set at the Google acquisition in 2006: YouTube was a distribution layer, and content decisions were creator decisions.

Shouldn’t have been tried · Backfence, 2005–2007

Backfence was an early hyper-local citizen journalism platform — the idea was that neighbourhoods could publish their own news, with residents contributing stories about local events, schools, zoning disputes, the things that never made it into regional papers.

Shouldn’t have been tried · Mark Barwald, mass-customised jeans, early 2010s

A startup attempted to sell mass-customised jeans online.