(75) Why is IIoT product management a gratifying career choice?
My decision to join AXOOM as a product manager was deeply intentional. Axoom was on a mission towards building something brave and audacious. (Read The Economist’s story on Axoom). The sheer complexity of building an IIoT platform was exhilarating and was a good enough reason to pull me in. Coming up with a strategy and roadmap for an IIoT platform can be very daunting and mind boggling even for the best of product leaders.
Building an IoT platform is a more complex endeavor than any regular product. Here’s why:
Complexity of multi-sided marketplace
A regular product would have a one to one relationship with a customer, even though there could be different customer segments. An IoT platform on the other hand is a multi-sided marketplace where each side is a completely different participant with its very unique needs.
The demands of a marketplace needs you to perform a delicate dance of nurturing the needs of each participant because for the platform to succeed, each participant needs to succeed. Each participant needs to win in this platform for the platform to thrive.
Addition of every new participant (3 sided, 4 sided, 5 sided etc) in your platforms exponentially adds complexity.
Technological Complexity
There is no one tech stack for building an IIoT platform. By its very design, there are many levels in an IIoT platform and each layer needs its own tech stack.
And not just that. The tech stack needs to have its own roadmap based on what stage of maturity you are operating in.
At the very basic level there are five layers of technology to consider:
- Device hardware
- Device software
- Communications
- Cloud platform
- Cloud applications
Image credit: Daniel Elizalde
Each of these five layers need to seamlessly work together to generate value for the ecosystem — a feat not for the faint-hearted.
Contrast this with a regular SaaS application, which only includes the two layers on the right side: Cloud Platform and Cloud Applications.
As a PM how and where would you start planning your strategy? Phew!
None of the regular product canvases work for IIoT platform
Two years ago, I had written an article summarizing all the product canvases under the sun.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/making-sense-all-product-canvases-under-sun-ravi-kumar-sapata/
But the complexity of building an IIoT platform is so mind bending that none of the traditional product canvases are applicable here.
There have been some attempts to create new product canvases for platform products. I had written a post about them here:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-platform-businesses-need-business-model-canvas-its-sapata/
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-platform-businesses-need-business-model-canvas-its-sapata/
So, as you can see, with such complexity in offering, it provides a gratifying opportunity to immerse yourself into this maze and solve the beast of a problem piece by piece.
If you are not yet in this field, take a chance. You might enjoy it!
