Mass psychology and the blind spot of product development

Some videos catch you like a note falling out of a notebook you thought you had closed years ago. On Instagram, the short story I came across is of that kind. A company announces that it is shelving an R&D project it has been working on for two years and on which it has spent 300 thousand dollars. Moreover, they do what most companies don't and share the reason why.

In a meeting two years ago, while looking for ideas to improve their already well-performing application, an executive asked, “TikTok style videos, if we add them to the app, would we increase our user base?” Heads nodded instantly around the table. The feeling of “Why not?” grew. Once senior management gave the approval, the project began. For two years, tests were conducted, prototypes were produced, iterations were tried… In the end, they faced a very simple truth: The user TikTok does not want an interface like this. The project is shelved.

But the real issue emerges after this. Someone speaks up in the meeting and says, 'I already knew this wouldn't catch on.' Then another, then another. Eventually, it becomes clear that everyone on the team was thinking the same thing; no one believed in the idea, yet no one objected.

There is no need to explain how familiar this scene is.

I, too, worked right in the middle of this trap for years. Especially TikTok and Instagram like user interfaces the question of "should we do it this way too?" was like background noise seeping through the curtains of every meeting. At first, I would object. I would explain that the design, the flow, the brand, and even the user type would not align with this aesthetic. However, I soon realized this: when you object as an employee in a company, they don't discuss the flaw in the idea, but rather your lack of desire to do anything. An objection is not perceived as an intellectual warning, but as a personal shortcoming.

After a point, you fall silent. Because if you don't, an atmosphere is created as if you are the one hindering progress. Yet, you see so much. You know where the trend is heading. But political reality does not reward you for this.

That is why I became a consultant. When you are a consultant, telling the truth is—at least in theory—what is expected. Being objective, bringing experience to the table, and stopping the wrong decision is your duty. But the irony of the business is this: when you tell the truth as a consultant, you are not invited to the next project because you are now "the person who stopped the project." Companies do not like those who stop them. Even if you are acknowledged as being right at that moment, the bill is still passed to you because the projects were delayed.

In the end, you realize that such things can only be said comfortably by the boss's advisor, a member of the board of directors, or someone who has transcended the power balances within the company. Otherwise, your career gets stuck in the invisible pits of organizational sociology.

This story serves as a reminder of a fundamental truth in the innovation ecosystem:

In companies, it is not accuracy that determines the fate of ideas, but mass psychology.

In meeting rooms, ideas are not lost due to technical justifications, but due to the absence of collective courage. People do not protect ideas; they protect their own positions. Most of the time, the "accepted idea" is not the correct one, but the one that no one dares to oppose.

Moreover, this is not just about corporate culture; it also cripples the essence of product design. Copying a competitor instead of understanding the user is not innovation, but a form of panic reflex. TikTok's success TikTok explaining it through aesthetics is already a conceptual error in itself. User behavior is not shaped by visual similarity, but by psycho-sociological motivations. Content feeds have their own culture. Every platform has a different social rhythm, consumption psychology, and community dynamic.

When you take the aesthetics of another platform and paste them onto your own product, the result is usually a two-year, $300,000 mistake.

The hardest part of corporate life is not predicting a mistake, but having the freedom to speak up about the mistake you have predicted. Sometimes the most correct position is to quietly step aside and watch the process crash into a wall on its own. Other times, it is to take the risk and say, "This is wrong"... and pay the price for it.

I have experienced both.

That is why, looking back today, this is clear:

In an organization, true innovationbegins not with finding the right idea, but with building a culture that can say "no" to the wrong one.

Without this culture, everything eventually boils down to those silent nods in meetings. The comfort of organizational conformity takes precedence over intellectual honesty. Companies continue to burn through two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars for the sake of a copied interface design.

From short videos to long-term projects, this is the only truth:

Where dissent is silenced, innovation is not growing, only waste is.