What Makes a Strong Product Culture?

Norton's essay on product culture is a compressed argument about what distinguishes strong product organisations from the rest — not the rituals or the frameworks, but the shared sense of what good product work looks like. The piece is useful because Norton is one of the few contemporary voices willing to argue that product is a craft rather than a process, and that culture is what keeps craft alive. For product direction the essay is a short diagnostic: most organisations that describe themselves as "product-led" are using the words without the underlying culture, and Norton's test is sharper than most. Pair with Cagan's Establishing a True Product Culture for a complementary take.