PRODUCT DNA: HOW SUCCESSFUL PRODUCT COMPANIES INNOVATE

A popular perception is that companies can drive innovation and build great products by talking to and seeking regular and timely feedback from potential and existing customers. While this may sound reasonable, unfortunately it is not true. Building a great market-leading product requires more than that. It needs something called “a product DNA”.

Most of us love music. But can most of us describe music in a manner that if someone composes it as per our liking or interest, then we will like it for sure? All we do is develop fondness (or dislike) for certain kind of music once someone composes it.

Similarly, most customers cannot describe how your product should look like or what they really need. If you create a product, then they may like it or dislike it.

If mobile phone manufacturers had conducted a survey about the features customers want in their mobile phones in the 90s, the most probable answers/requests would have been: Increase in battery power, more storage for address/contacts, Increased size of text messages and address book retrieval if the phone is lost. In all likelihood, a smart phone wouldn’t have been a preference or suggestion as part of the survey findings. Not by any single customer. Not by the entire set of survey respondents collectively.

So, essentially neither the sum of all customer feedback would have helped produce an innovative product feature set nor individual feedback. The popular perception that customer feedback is the foundation of innovation is potentially false.

Sometimes a product is an outcome of an objective and sometimes it is a consequence of an unrelated objective. A classic example of objective-based outcome is the most efficient search engine on the block — Google — developed by Larry Page and Sergei Brin. Driverless car is also an example of objective-based outcome. A great example of consequence-based product is Amazon Web Services. It is a consequence of the technology Amazon built to run its flagship product — the Amazon e-commerce web site. Or consider the phenomenon that led Percy Spencer to the invention of a microwave. Percy was experimenting with a radar related vacuum tube when a candy bar in his pocket started melting and he applied this knowledge to build the prototype for a microwave.

You can read the complete blog at https://www.edgeverve.com/finacle/blogs/product-dna-successful-product-companies-innovate/

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