Do a few things very well
When it comes to product strategy philosophy, mine usually consists to focus on a very specific problem for a very specific niche — to grow and improve on the vertical axis until that one is conquered. That’s what I believe is best and what I usually recommend.
This is not only because solving a single problem very well is already a hard challenge, but also because, from a marketing perspective, the broader the product and the audience, the harder it is to position it.
(Procter and Gamble is such a strong believer of this that they have a brand for each specific job/segment. For example, their Ivory brand is for personal care soap, Tide for laundry detergent and Fairy for the dishwashing detergent. Just to give 3 of many examples from P&G.)
But in my experience most founders don’t agree that building more features and for more audiences (at once) is, more often than not, damaging for their businesses.
More recently, I finally decided to read Blue Ocean Strategy — the bible of business strategists.
In this book, specialization plus differentiation is defined as one of the pillars for thriving businesses. And to address this they have some interesting frameworks.
More specifically, they start by asking companies the following:
- Which of the factors that the industry takes for granted should be eliminated?
- Which factors should be reduced well below the industry’s standard?
- Which factors should be raised well above the industry’s standard?
- Which factors should be created that the industry has never offered?
One of the examples they provide is Cirque do Soleil:
Which when applied on the Strategy Canvas, results in the following value curve (also contrasted with value curves of the competition):
The outcome is a circus company without animal shows, star performers, multiple arenas etc, but with other factors that completely overcome competition.
The outcome is a company which is focused on where they can bring the most value — thus reducing costs and effort — while distancing themselves from the competition — by creating and raising elements the industry never offered.
Doing a few things very well it’s elegant, it’s effective, and hard in practice.
I have it as one of my pillars when it comes to product strategy.
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I’m Daniel, Product Manager at Whitesmith. Paper Planes is a place where I reflect on my experiences and learnings on the craft of Product Management, and share them with my team and community under the form of short blog posts.
