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4 Product Strategies for Success

I’m working on putting together one or more entrepreneurial ventures to keep me entertained in 2008. To both evaluate & generate ideas, I’ve put together a rough framework - below - of what I consider to be successful strategies. Any idea I’ve had needs to fit into one of these; if it doesn’t, there’s no business case to it. If I’m short on ideas on any given day, I can pick a strategy and apply it to any given product or market to kick start some thinking.

It certainly hasn’t made me wealthy yet (hooray for dayjobs!), but I’m still at it, and in the meantime you’re welcome to join me. YMMV!

Better Mousetrap: Modified product or proposition, same market (i.e.: price or feature competition)
Ex: Google: simpler search, better results in an already crowded market
Re-purpose: Existing product, sold to new market segment
Ex: Camelback hydration packs sold to the military for solidiers
Niche: New product aimed at a previously untargeted market segment
Ex: Pugspot identifies pug owners as a monetizeable segment
Need: Identify an un-addressed, or unrecognized consumer need
Ex: The banana guard (transporting a common, fragile food), or Overstock.com (liquidating old inventory)

EDIT: Note that I’m not including a definition of success here. Booth Google and the Banana Guard can be considered “successful” products - though the scales are obviously different.

business, design, marketing success

3 Responses to “4 Product Strategies for Success”

Joel | September 27th, 2007 at 7:09 am

Here are a few more for your list:

1) Aggregation and filtering: Taking lots of data and summarizing it or filtering it based on user preferences
Ex: TechMeme, FeedHub

2) New Interface: Take something that currently exists and give people a new way to interact with it
Ex: Twitter took something that had been around forever (blogging) and made it “fun” by letting people interact via IM or SMS

3) Value add: Add a plugin or widget to an existing product that’s already popular
Ex: a facebook app, a wordpress plugin, or MyBlogLog

No matter which of the paths you take, I think the key is to Think Different (our new motto around here). Whatever you do, you’re dead in the water if you don’t stand out from the crowd immediately. As an example, every time I see a site with news stories that get voted up or down I immediately think “great, another digg clone” and dismiss it offhand. If people describe your business as “Another _________” then you’re in trouble already.
More Jack’s Business » 4 Product Strategies for Success | November 4th, 2007 at 10:31 am

[…] read more | digg story […]
Product Metastrategies « The Pursuit of a Life | December 28th, 2007 at 12:45 am

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