Is your product really so wonderful?
The only opinions that matter are those of potential customers. This needs to be the basic starting point of your product development. Although this assertion is probably common knowledge, it is still worth repeating again and again.
If you don’t want to waste time and money developing something unsuccessful:
- Obtain customer feedback as rapidly as you can
- Incorporate what you learn early in product development
It is not so much about what you know; it is far more important that you learn fast.
Approach product development differently: learn fast – it is cheaper
In order to achieve change, you need to shift the strategy-making power from marketeers and accountants, who view customers simply as the intermediary between product and profit. An article at management-issues.com suggests you should instead entrust this task to engineers and designers. They need to be the prime influencers of your business strategy.
Given the pace of change and ever-present market complexity, even many traditional corporations today can see the value of approaching product development differently. We need to accept failure as an important part of the development process. This is often a mental stumbling block for incumbents because the thinking that prevails in old corporations considers failure to be a sign of incompetence; therefore, it should be avoided at all costs.
But it is much needed nowadays as very few – if any – of us get customer needs right first time. You need to use:
- Prototyping
- Building a minimal viable product
- Customer testing
-jk-