Product Management = Policy + Business + Tech

Product Management = Policy + Business + Tech

Most product managers live inside a familiar Venn diagram. Business viability. Technical feasibility. User experience.

We obsess over finding that sweet spot where all three circles overlap. Build something users want, that’s technically possible, that makes business sense.

But I think we’re missing a circle. A critical one.

It hit me back in 2020 when I was working on infrastructure that would let any business integrate the Nigerian Stock Exchange data into their application or services. We were making typical product decisions, data flows, rate limits, verification requirements. Standard stuff, right?

Except every choice we made shaped who could access Nigeria’s capital markets for the first time. Our rate limits became market access policy. Our verification flows determined who got to participate in wealth creation.

We weren’t just building a product. We were writing the rules for how an entire economic system would work.

That’s when I realized: we need to stop treating policy as something that happens to our products and start treating it as something we actively build into them.

The Traditional Framework Is Incomplete

Here’s the thing about that classic Product Management Venn diagram, Business, Tech, UX. It’s not wrong. It’s just incomplete.

User experience? That’s already baked into how we build technology. You can’t ship a product today without thinking about interfaces, flows, and user needs. UX thinking is inherent to modern product development.

But policy thinking? That’s treated as an afterthought. Something the legal team worries about. Something that constrains us rather than guides us.

And that’s a problem.

Because whether we acknowledge it or not, our product decisions create policy outcomes. We’re just doing it accidentally instead of intentionally.

What Policy Means in Product Management

I’m not talking about compliance. I’m not talking about checking regulatory boxes or avoiding lawsuits.

I’m talking about actively considering how your product shapes economic outcomes, social structures, and human opportunity at scale.

When I was building the retail investment platform at GetEquity, we spent weeks debating minimum investment amounts. Should it be ₦1,000? ₦5,000?

That number determined which economic class could start building wealth through startups. Set it too high, and you lock out millions of people who could afford to invest small amounts consistently. Set it too low, and you might overwhelm early-stage companies with micro-investments they can’t effectively manage.

We were essentially writing monetary policy through our product requirements document.

The Three Circles That Actually Matter

So what does the new framework look like?

Policy: How does this product shape economic outcomes, social structures, and human opportunity? What systemic impact will it have if it succeeds at scale?

Business: Is this economically viable? Can we build a sustainable company around it? Do the unit economics work?

Tech: Can we actually build this? Do we have the technical capabilities? Is the implementation feasible?

Notice what happened to UX? It didn’t disappear. It’s embedded in all three circles. You can’t think about policy impact without considering user behavior. You can’t evaluate business viability without understanding user needs. You can’t assess technical feasibility without designing for real people.

UX is already part of how we build technology inherently. But ensuring that what we build helps us deliver prosperity for all humanity? That needs to be explicitly added to the toolkit of product managers.

What This Looks Like in Practice

When I joined Future Africa to build Itana, Nigeria’s first digital jurisdiction, this became impossible to ignore. We were creating an environment for technology companies to thrive legally. Our user experience was legislation. Our product was a regulatory framework.

Every choice about required documents, approval timelines, supported business types, these were policy decisions shaping how thousands of companies could operate. We asked policy questions from day one: What kind of business ecosystem are we enabling? Who benefits? Who might be excluded? How do we ensure this delivers prosperity broadly?

That’s the difference between accidental policy and intentional policy.

During my internship at Amazon, I worked on duty drawback predictions, building models to help Amazon proactively reduce prices for customers outside the United States.

Traditional product thinking would frame this as customer experience optimization. Better prices, happier customers, more sales.

But policy thinking asks bigger questions: by making international goods more affordable, what trade dynamics are we changing? How does this affect local economies? Are we enabling access to products people genuinely need, or just accelerating consumption patterns that might not serve them well?

The team that thinks about those policy implications builds better products. Not just more successful products, genuinely better ones.

Why Product Managers Need to Think Like Policymakers

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: product managers at successful tech companies have more influence over how people live than most elected officials.

When Spotify builds recommendation algorithms, they shape cultural consumption patterns for hundreds of millions of people. When fintech companies set credit scoring parameters, they determine who gets access to financial mobility. When platforms design content moderation systems, they’re essentially writing speech policy for billions.

And right now, we’re making these decisions primarily through business and technical lenses. We optimize for engagement metrics, revenue growth, and technical elegance.

But are we asking whether our products deliver prosperity for all humanity? Are we considering systemic outcomes, not just individual user satisfaction?

That’s what policy thinking adds to product management.

Building the New Framework

So what does it mean to actually practice Policy + Business + Tech product management?

First, involve the right voices early. If your product decisions create policy outcomes, then economists, sociologists, ethicists, and community representatives should be at the table during product planning. Not as consultants brought in to review your decisions, but as core participants in making them.

Second, ask systemic questions. Before shipping features, ask: if everyone uses this the way we’re designing it, what world are we creating? Not just what behaviors are we optimizing, but what systems are we reinforcing or disrupting?

Third, think beyond your users. UX thinking focuses on people who use your product. Policy thinking considers people affected by your product, including those who never touch it directly but live in systems it influences.

Fourth, measure what matters. Business metrics and engagement metrics are important. But what about impact metrics? Are you tracking whether your product actually delivers prosperity broadly, or just to certain groups?

The World We’re Building

When I look at the infrastructure I helped build at Woven Finance that enabled an 80% increase in Nigerian Stock Exchange trading volume, I don’t just see a successful product. I see economic rails that changed how capital flows in Nigeria’s economy.

When I think about GetEquity facilitating $500K in investments across 35 African startups, I don’t just see transaction volume. I see thousands of people participating in wealth creation for the first time.

When I consider Itana enabling over 200 technology businesses to incorporate seamlessly, I don’t just see user satisfaction scores. I see an economic ecosystem that might not have existed otherwise.

These outcomes happened because we thought about policy alongside business and technology. Because we asked not just “will this work?” but “should we build this? What happens if we succeed?”

The Toolkit We Need Now

Product management was born in an era when the primary question was “can we build technology people want to use?”

We’ve gotten really good at answering that question. Maybe too good.

Now we need to ask bigger questions. Not just what users want, but what humanity needs. Not just what’s technically feasible, but what’s socially responsible. Not just what drives business growth, but what delivers broad prosperity.

That requires a new framework. Not Business + Tech + UX, but Policy + Business + Tech.

Because whether we acknowledge it or not, we’re already making policy. We’re already shaping economic systems and social structures.

The only question is whether we’ll do it thoughtfully or accidentally.

And in my experience, the world has had enough accidental policy already.

Tosin Oladokun is a product manager, builder, and innovator passionate about startups and emerging technology. With experience spanning Amazon, Future Africa, GetEquity, and Woven Finance, he has launched products in fintech, venture capital, and global trade that have empowered hundreds of businesses and investors. Currently pursuing his MBA at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, Tosin is on a mission to become a serial technology founder committed to delivering prosperity to humanity.

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