What's your product R&D strategy?

1 Define your product goals

The first step in developing a product R&D strategy is to define your product goals. What are the problems you want to solve for your customers? What are the benefits you want to deliver to them? What are the features and functions you want to offer? How do you want to differentiate your product from your competitors? Your product goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART). They should also align with your business goals, such as increasing revenue, market share, customer satisfaction, or brand awareness.

2 Research your market and customers

The next step in developing a product R&D strategy is to research your market and customers. You need to understand the current and future trends, opportunities, and challenges in your industry. You also need to know who your target customers are, what their needs, preferences, pain points, and expectations are, and how they use or would use your product. You can use various methods to conduct market and customer research, such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, observation, analytics, or feedback. You should also analyze your competitors, their products, strengths, weaknesses, and strategies.

3 Ideate and validate your product concepts

The third step in developing a product R&D strategy is to ideate and validate your product concepts. You need to generate and evaluate different ideas for your product features, design, and functionality. You can use techniques such as brainstorming, mind mapping, sketching, prototyping, or testing to stimulate your creativity and test your assumptions. You should also involve your customers and stakeholders in the ideation and validation process, to get their feedback and input. You should aim to create a minimum viable product (MVP) that delivers the core value proposition of your product and meets the needs of your early adopters.

4 Plan and execute your product R&D projects

The fourth step in developing a product R&D strategy is to plan and execute your product R&D projects. You need to prioritize your product R&D projects based on their impact, feasibility, and alignment with your product goals. You also need to define the scope, budget, timeline, deliverables, and roles and responsibilities for each project. You should use a project management methodology that suits your product R&D approach, such as agile, waterfall, or hybrid. You should also monitor and control your project progress, quality, risks, and issues, and communicate regularly with your team and stakeholders.

5 Evaluate and improve your product R&D outcomes

The fifth step in developing a product R&D strategy is to evaluate and improve your product R&D outcomes. You need to measure and analyze the performance, impact, and value of your product R&D activities. You can use various metrics and indicators, such as customer satisfaction, retention, loyalty, referrals, revenue, profitability, market share, or innovation. You should also collect and review the feedback and suggestions from your customers, stakeholders, and team members, and identify the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of your product R&D process. You should use the insights and learnings from your evaluation to improve your product R&D strategy and practices.

6 Learn from product R&D case studies

The sixth and final step in developing a product R&D strategy is to learn from product R&D case studies. You can learn from the successes and failures of other companies and products in your industry or domain. You can study how they defined their product goals, researched their market and customers, ideated and validated their product concepts, planned and executed their product R&D projects, and evaluated and improved their product R&D outcomes. You can also learn from their best practices, challenges, mistakes, and lessons learned. You can use the product R&D case studies as inspiration, benchmark, or reference for your own product R&D strategy.

7 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?