# Tom Richards — career and conversation guide

## About the guest

Tom Richards describes his work at Cisco on strategy and planning for bringing collaboration and workplace devices to market. His career moved from pure mathematics into AI research, a startup and product management. In this conversation, he reflects on the people and organizational conditions that turn a technical capability into a useful product.

## The conversation

A technical problem can have a good answer while the business problem remains unsolved. Tom and Simon explore the distance between a working demonstration and a product that customers can adopt, use and benefit from.

## Ideas to take away

### A working product is a starting point.

Customers also need the commercial, organizational and practical conditions that make adoption possible.

### Dissatisfaction contains useful information.

Tom wants to understand the environment behind a complaint, including habits a product specification cannot address.

### Choose useful customer contact.

Bringing engineers closer to users helps, provided the selection reflects the wider market rather than only the loudest accounts.

[Return to the conversation](https://b4obvious.com/interviews/tom-richards/)

*Edited companion notes based on the interview. Roles reflect the recording, rather than a current employment claim.*