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Typically, you would start with questions like these: Does the business problem exist? Does the customer need exist? How do we know whether this feature or service will address that need? As you sit down with your teams to plan out your next initiatives, ask them these questions. What’s the most important thing or things we need to learn first? What’s the fastest, most efficient way to learn that?
Sense and Respond
Jeff Gothelf, Josh Seiden
Indeed, this is what has happened at AutoTrader UK, where teams are no longer funded annually to build a set of features. Instead, the organization now checks in with each team on a quarterly basis to see how it’s tracking against initiative goals. Initiative goals are quantitative and based on changing customer behavior in some way that benefits the business. Teams get funded to change these behaviors, one quarter at a time. As the quarter nears its end the company assesses, with the team, whether it’s worthwhile to continue working toward those outcomes. If so, the team gets another quarter’s worth of runway. If not, it moves on to a new initiative.
Sense and Respond
Jeff Gothelf, Josh Seiden
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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