product strategy
Split personalities: what to do when your products overlap
A surprising number of B2B tech companies I know have products that overlap. Most of the overlap came through acquisitions - although I have worked at places where there was non-trivial functional overlap between native products, as well.
However you’ve come into possession of products that are “do-alikes” if not “look-alikes,” you’ve got a challenge on [...]
Vitamin? Pain-killer? What’s your product do for humankind?
The other day, I was yacking with Ken, an old friend and colleague,and he mentioned he was working hard to make sure that, when he’s communicating the value of his company’s products, he makes it a point to focus on the “painkiller” features, rather than on the “vitamin” features.
I wasn’t familiar with this nomenclature, but [...]
What to do if the product’s just not differentiated
I have a client that’s in a very crowded and fragmented market space. The market is old enough to have dozens of vendors in it, but young enough not to have yet consolidated into a few big guys offering all things to all men, and the smaller, niche satellite players that will continue to plug [...]
Think and Do
When I was in primary school, we had workbooks that were called Think and Do. They were full of simple little arithmetic problems and written-word exercises - busy work, of course. And who could blame a nun trying to manage a class with 45 kids in it by setting them to some busy work task. [...]
Today’s stand alone product, tomorrow’s check list feature
Consider the point application, especially as brought to you by a small, one product B2B software company.
Your application solves a problem, and may even solve it quite well.
As marketing, you have, of course,helped define the application with a particular market in mind. You know your target intimately: why they need and want your product, how [...]
"Tuned In" does some myth debunking
I knew I’d be back to Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs, by Craig Stull, Phil Myers & David Meerman Scott, which I reviewed on Monday. I just didn’t know it would be so soon - and it’s to delve into the myths that they debunk as table stakes for [...]
On the reading list: "Tuned In"
I’ve had the book for a while, and read it eagerly when it first arrived, but for whatever reason, I hadn’t gotten around to writing about Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs, by Craig Stull, Phil Myers & David Meerman Scott.
Well, now I have.
Forget that the title is a [...]
Product Requirements: How to Figure Out What to Put in the Stew
Even though it’s often a no-win situation, I’ve always enjoyed the process of coming up with product requirements. I really like taking all those disparate threads and coming up what will be in the next mix.
Things have changed, of course, since I was establishing product requirements. With the development tools available, release cycles, at least [...]
Progress is good, right?
The New York Times wrote about the return of the browser wars last week. The browser world is getting interesting again; Firefox 3 will be released this month, Microsoft is showing test versions of IE8, and Apple’s Safari is making inroads thanks to the iPhone and their unfortunate decision to push out to Windows users [...]
For the beach bum who has everything…
The other day, my sister Kathleen forwarded an e-mail she’d gotten from Zappo’s and suggested I take a look.
I combed through it, and what to my wondering eye did appear but a blurb for some high-end flip-flops with a built in church key.
First off, I want to say how gratifying it is to know that [...]
