Recently, I picked up Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book Gathering Moss, a profound exploration of the natural world. Early in the book, she shares a piece of wisdom passed down from an elder: “The best way to find something is not to go looking for it.” Instead, we’re told to watch out of the corner of our eye, not fixate, but remain open.
This philosophy, rooted in ecology and traditional knowledge, has surprising relevance to product management. Our modern product discovery processes reward sharp focus: well-defined hypotheses, tight feedback loops, and validated assumptions. But what if some of the most valuable insights, the ones that lead to game-changing features or even entirely new products, live in the periphery?
The most important discoveries are rarely planned. Penicillin. Post-it Notes. Slack. None of these began with a roadmap. They emerged from paying attention to what others might ignore. From remaining open to the unexpected.
Like many product managers, I feel most alive in discovery mode: spending time with users, identifying problems, and mapping out opportunity spaces. But as I’ve grown in my role, I’ve also realized that delivery fuels me too. There’s real energy in shipping, hitting OKRs, and seeing tangible progress.
This creates a natural tension that I constantly navigate, and I know many other product managers do too. How do you justify wandering in the margins when the business demands momentum? How do you advocate for spending time in ambiguity when every meeting is about metrics?
As someone who thrives on both structure and surprise, the question I often come back to is: What percentage of my time should I spend uncovering accidental insights? (Hint: I’m asking the wrong question, but I’ll get to that later).
Many modern product frameworks are designed to make room for ambiguity, but in practice, we often rush past it.
Take Teresa Torres’ Opportunity Solution Tree. It asks us to distinguish between outcomes, opportunities, and solutions, shifting discovery from solution-finding to opportunity-mapping. It reminds us that peripheral insights, those subtle comments that show up once or twice in research, can grow into new branches if we’re paying attention.
Another model I lean on is the Double Diamond from the Design Council. It embraces divergent and convergent thinking: first, you explore widely; then, you define. You ideate broadly, then narrow down and deliver. It legitimizes exploration, and it puts curiosity on equal footing with execution.
But too often, teams rush through the divergent phase. In the name of efficiency, we clip discovery short. This limits our chances of uncovering something truly transformative.
Instead of asking “How much time should I spend on uncovering accidental insights?”, I’ve started asking: “How can we embed accidental discovery into our existing process?”
Here are four tactics I’ve found useful:
1. Keep a discovery backlog. Maintain a backlog of confusing or curious observations. Some ideas age into relevance. You can keep this on Notion, on Miro, or even in a spreadsheet if you aren’t confident that these ideas should be in your official backlog yet.
2. Allow tangent-friendly interviews. Don’t book your interviews back to back if you can avoid it. Let the script breathe. If a user is emotionally engaged, follow the thread. Curiosity is contagious, and some of your best insights will come from digressions.
3. Build reflection into your research process. After every discovery session, I ask myself, “What felt weird?” or “What are we ignoring?” These answers often contain seeds of innovation.
4. Ritualize curiosity with your team. Incorporate metaphor mapping, storytelling, or even sketching into your workshops. These practices encourage lateral thinking and reveal patterns that might otherwise be missed.
Accidental discoveries don’t only happen through interviews. Quantitative analysis can also help you uncover compelling new insights. One of the reasons I fell in love with data was because of the unexpected stories it told. Some of my most energizing moments as a product manager come when the numbers don’t line up with our assumptions. When something breaks my mental model.
Why is this number dipping while everything else is rising? Why did that user behave so differently? These aren’t anomalies to dismiss, they’re clues. I use a simple reflection model I first learned in university: What? So What? Now What?
As AI becomes more integrated into product discovery, it’s worth asking: can it help us notice what's on the periphery? AI excels at surfacing statistical anomalies, clustering unexpected themes in user feedback, and identifying outlier behaviours that might otherwise be overlooked. This makes it an incredibly powerful tool for product managers to use. But while AI can highlight what’s unusual, it can’t always tell us what’s meaningful.
Peripheral discovery often starts with a hunch, a gut feeling, or an emotional undercurrent. It might be something a user says with hesitation, or something that just doesn’t sit right. These moments require more context, empathy, and human curiosity to interpret. The most powerful approach might be a partnership: let AI bring the strange to the surface, and let product teams bring the curiosity to ask, “What might this really mean?”
Here are some prompts that you can use to try it out:
Some of these practices might sound like luxuries reserved for an ideal version of product management. But they’re not just idealistic, they’re strategic. And when you combine them with strong delivery and solid metrics, you can make a compelling business case for them.
Here’s how:
While working on a caregiver education product, we repeatedly heard users mention feelings of isolation. It wasn’t part of our original problem statement. We hadn’t asked about it. But it kept surfacing in interviews.
Instead of brushing it aside, we made space to explore it. We built a prototype: lightweight peer support groups. Engagement jumped. Retention skyrocketed. Today, those support groups are the cornerstone of our product experience, and it all started with something we almost ignored.
To look out of the corner of your eye is to accept that you don’t know everything. It’s an act of humility to believe that value might live outside your assumptions.
So stay open. Loosen your grip. Create processes that reward curiosity.
And when something strange emerges at the edge of your product, don’t look away. That might be the forest showing you the path.
