Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Main idea
A regulatory stake that keeps coming up with several customers in the same segment is a single building block of knowledge. Picked up by Product, it becomes a roadmap decision; by Product Marketing, a differentiation message; by Sales, a proof of value to put forward in a meeting; by the CSM, an adoption journey; by content marketing, a piece of reassurance.
Nothing was copied from one function to another, and that is the point. What circulates is not somebody else's deliverable, it is the material each one draws their own from. An organization that circulates deliverables forces every function to undo the previous format before producing its own; an organization that circulates building blocks asks nothing of the kind.
The condition lies in the shape of the building block. A note written for the PRD already carries the PRD's framing, and the next function will have to strip it. A building block stays recombinable as long as it has the shape of none of the five deliverables it is going to feed.
Why it matters
This changes the economics of capitalization work. A building block written once and picked up by five functions doesn't compare with the cost of writing a note; it compares with the cost of five analyses run in parallel, each unaware of the other four.
It also gives a writing test, applicable at the moment of drafting: if you can't name two functions that would pick up this building block to produce two different things, what you are writing is already a draft deliverable.
Nuances and limits
Not every building block is multi-purpose. An implementation constraint, a migration detail, a technical limit of a connector concern only one function, and writing them in a neutral form costs something and returns nothing.
Recombination isn't free either: going from a regulatory stake to a differentiation message is translation work, and it takes Product Marketing's craft. The shared building block removes the rediscovery, not the craft.
Open questions
- Who bears the cost of writing a building block in a shape none of the expected deliverables asks for, when every function is assessed on its own deliverable?