Product and market co-evolve often mean that the time we need to build a market that doesn’t exist. Product + Market = innovation. Product development doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Instead, to be successful, product development must coincide with the development of the market in which we hope to sell a product, the development of a business plan, and the development of strategy around it. of course, It is hard to see the future because people identify opportunities through lenses of existing knowledge and inject their bias. Disruptive innovations often success in markets that are not yet apparent for example tablet computer, Airbnb, Uber, Tesla, etc. Most companies segment their markets by customer demographics or product characteristics and differentiate their offerings by adding features and functions. However, the consumer has a different view of the marketplace. She has a job to be done and is seeking to “hire” the best product or service to do it.
Understanding the job and improving the product on dimensions of the experience so that it does the’ job’ better would cause the company’s cash cow to gain share against the real competition- not just competing for revenue not captured.
Are you working hard to develop and launch new or innovative ideas?…
….. If so, I have some wisdom to share.
In my opinion, # Ways product manager(s) fail
- Not developing active listening skill
- Lack of empathy for a lead user
- By not creating a different business model for a different customer segment
- Investing a long time for polishing minimum viable product (MVP), thus failing to understand the fundamental of creating product/customer feedback loop (ref: Webinar call with Prof. Baba Shiv @ Stanford)
- As often debated among my Silicon Valley fellow product managers & engineer friend – do three things a) get the first customer to pay for your product b) create a feedback loop c) revise the go-to-market strategy around it in agile mode
- Do not prototype. pretotype. Yes, it is not typo Pretotype is a thing (If you have never heard the term pre-to-typing before, don’t despair, you are not alone. Go read book by Alberto Savoia OR read an article here: What is Pretotyping?
- Do not invest time and money if you don’t see product-market fit. Learn to let it go 🙂
- Allow people to contribute. Remember What can google teach us about Innovation? Innovation comes from anywhere! reference: Gopi Kallayil
- Lastly, Avoid elephant and blind problem in product development. Update business model iteratively. It is input to all the following activities such as market sizing effort, customer discovery interview, data analysis, customer test selling (up to certain extent) to create a solid business model or a lean startup.
Note: If you are Product Manager and have suggestions on how to improve this article, I welcome feedback in the comments section.
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Photos by – Friend in India. Yes, that is me in photo vacationing in India & trying to innovate.
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