202202162026 hub & spoke vs entire wheel

Invision relaunched their product/platform. What’s interesting are some of the comments made on Product Hunt: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/the-new-invision. The comments are similar to what I talk about when I refer to building the “entire wheel” vs the “hub”.

why would a tradesperson use a hammer that’s tethered by string to a saw when there may be a better hammer out there. Maybe there’s not a better hammer yet? Maybe other manufacturers should be encouraged to fit that need, and maybe that should be encouraged in product design. (link)

Seems like the trend towards mega WorkOSes is strong... which I suppose is about creating a moat and long-term lock-in, but how do you avoid bloat while encouraging the production of best-in-breed product experiences? (link)

Reply from Invision to the above:

I tend to agree with you that the more we stop working to duplicate ‘best-in-breed’ products poorly and the more we learn to unify them elegantly with lightweight, flexible, powerful organizational systems the better (and hopefully more fun) work will be. The key is for the system to get out of the way of the best-in-breed tools, not to try and eat them. That’s our goal here. (link)

I recommend reading the entire comment and the reply from Invision as well.