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Having a coherent strategy—one that coordinates policies and actions. A good strategy doesn’t just draw on existing strength; it creates strength through the coherence of its design. Most organizations of any size don’t do this. Rather, they pursue multiple objectives that are unconnected with one another or, worse, that conflict with one another.
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy
Richard Rumelt
Unfortunately, it’s not as simple as talking to customers every week. That’s a good start. But we also need to consider the rest of our continuous-discovery definition: At a minimum, weekly touchpoints with customers By the team building the product Where they conduct small research activities In pursuit of a desired outcome I’ve met many teams who are good at talking to customers. But they forget that the purpose of these customer touchpoints is to conduct research in pursuit of a desired outcome. Those last two lines of the definition are critical. We aren’t doing research for research’s sake. We are doing research so that we can serve our customers in a way that creates value for our business.
Continuous Discovery Habits
Teresa Torres
If you’re working on a strategy for a whole product, then the superpowers that you might have can be split into 7 categories:
• **Network effects** – Each user enjoys more value as new users join the network
• **Scale economies** – Unit costs decline as volume increases
• **Switching costs** – Switching to an alternate product would be costly or painful for users
• **Counter positioning** – Where a new product’s business model or value proposition cannot easily be copied by incumbents as it would damage their existing business
• **Cornered resource** – Unique access to a valuable asset
• **Branding** – An objectively identical offering has higher perceived value
• **Process Power** – Embedded company culture and process which enable lower costs and/or superior quality
How to Write a Product Strategy in 1 Day / 1 Week / 1 Month
Aakash Gupta
...catch up on these, and many more highlights
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