There is a difference between core functionality and a complete product. The difference is success or failure in an organization’s ability to win in the market. Core functionality might get you in the door with an early adopter, but it doesn’t scale to the bigger market. So what makes up the complete product? Here are some attributes:

• Packaging
• Ease of installation
• Documentation
• Ease of maintenance
• Ongoing user experience
• Integration with 3rd party utilities
• Sales support materials
• Channel support materials
• Technical support materials
• SDKs and sample code (for platforms)
• Development Partners (for platforms)
• Demos

It is so easy to become excited about the proof of technology, and we should. And the next thing we should do is Continue reading →

For the 3 years, I worked on a new business unit inside an established company. Before that I was working on new product launches for another established company that was looking for new growth opportunities. In both cases, it was apparent that the core company did not want to embrace the change needed to allow the new venture to succeed. At the heart of the problem is that the new business unit / product division needs to use different tactics than the established business uses. The established business process have been refined and perfected over years by those who are now the senior management.

What makes these practices so valuable for the core business is exactly what makes them deadly for the new ventures. They minimize risk to the existing business by rejecting / killing other processes that might introduce instability. The new venture is by definition a risky process, if it is even a process at all yet. It is like our own immune system… Continue reading →

At a recent startup event, I asked one of the founders to talk about their product; it was a consumer focused web application. During the description I was struck by the number of times she said “… and then we allow the user to choose…” I appreciated the freedom they “allowed” me, but I was exhausted!

What really struck me was the dual-nature of providing user choice. One perspective is that it exposes functionality and customization to the user, which sounds like a good thing. Alternatively, providing choice is just avoiding making a decision for the customer. I mean, ideally, I’d start to use the product and the experience would just be intuitive; I wouldn’t have to choose.

It is easy to see how a company gets stuck Continue reading →

I had coffee with my friend and mentor Neil Baron (blog) this morning. We were talking about methods organizations can use to drive adoption of new innovative products. At the heart of the conversation were tactics to identify the value that early adopters see in products, and how to translate these into benefits that the early majority will recognize and with which they will identify.

For some services and products, it makes sense to lower the price to $0, or “make it free”. If it’s free, and has value, why wouldn’t everyone take advantage of the offer? The thing is that even if the target customer is aware of the solution offered for free, they might not adopt. This is because there are still costs to adopting a solution. The customer still has to do something. Continue reading →

I was making spaghetti last week and thinking about customer research. I know, it’s not normal. Anyway, what I was thinking was how quantitative analysis can be true, valuable, and irrelevant all at the same time. And qualitative research can also be true, valuable, and irrelevant all at the same time.

Looking at my pasta I tabulated stats about the pasta. Continue reading →