The last mile in Innovation Success : from a 'Product' to a 'Solution'

When building an enterprise-grade product, there is an often-quoted wisdom that resonates with Product leaders - in all probability, about eight out of ten concepts may not see the light of the day, and of the two left, maybe one or less would steal the limelight!

One of the key differentials between an Enterprise-focused Product and an End User-targeted Product is - among other things, is the time and effort to reclaim the customer, should things go south. The scale of impact that a B2B (business-to-business) product creates is way different from the adoption that a B2C (business-to-consumer) product might garner. Metrics aside, the pertinent litmus test to determine the success of a technology-founded innovation at an enterprise level would be : how well is the end-stage utility of the client matching the intended design of a product, upon hitting live. Case in point, this is more pronounced in the case of 'as-a-Service' technology offerings.

Product Managers go through a varied range of pulls right from the drawing board where they'd have doodled an idea, to walking to the board room on the day of going live with the product. From questioning their own sanity behind coming up with a concept line, building the idea incrementally, forming (and refining a few times) the hypothesis on the use case, gathering data on the haves-and-have-nots, estimating the effort and if that's proportionate to the dollar at the end of the show, getting multiple stakeholders onto a singular page to envision the product, working and reworking with the developers on the requirements, testing, validating (more so when Artificial Intelligence is involved in the narrative), re-validating and finally pulling aside the curtains - the product goes through innumerous iterations.

But that's not all! Bringing an idea to live is one side of the story alone. The actual finish line is a bit further - when the customers begin to use the product and see how well do they want to (or, not want to) use it further. The Zero-to-One journey is often convincing, but the actual barometer lies in the one-upwards part of the meter!

That is the phase when the product actually begins to be a solution that the customer wants to use to solve for a specific statement. In a Product Manager's journey, that last mile is the hardest part to wait for.

By their prowess, Product Managers ideally are expected to know the end-user utility right from the initial stages of design. However, in a blue sky scenario (where an innovative idea is being backed for bringing to life), the degree of uncertainty on the what and the how of the actual utility looks like is higher.

By conceptual thinking, here are a few elements that Product Managers may leverage during the entire thought-to-tangible story, that'd better enable the product to cross the last mile seamlessly:

• Go-to-Market (GTM) Approach - How big or how focused? : When ideating a concept-product, the sky seems to be the limit (figuratively) for the utility. However, an innovative idea's worst enemy is to not have a defined core user profile, to whom the product would anchor to when it comes to live. Product Managers at the best should be realistic in estimating the target market segments, so that it becomes pragmatic to stay glued to the pulse of the actual use cases. This would be different as an approach for a time-tested application or dashboarding product, for example.
• Finding the product-market fit (PMF) - expect some brickbats : In the initial stages of a product that's yet to test the markets, it is not uncommon to find that the intended use-case is in a displaced tangent in terms of the actual customer segments that could use it. In converse, there may be situations where the utility is vastly being adopted by unknown segments (for instance, when one talks to Experience Management enterprises, the 'voice-of-customer' modules of experiential analytics' products has been interchangeably used for internal employee satisfaction analysis too). Product Managers would need to (a) stay invested in efforts on tracking the fitment and (b) be willing to dissociate with their 'attachment' towards the incubation, if needed be.
• Product-led Growth (PLG) better than a full-blow-out : Finding a fit is one, but the risk of recurring utility is another side of the story. The itch of chasing growth once a fit is known isn't uncommon, however, for blue sky innovations, it is always pertinent to stay on the true-north course of the product, post the PMF stage. Envision a Juggernaut gathering momentum at a pace, rather than a spinner flying around all out. The former needs relatively less efforts to monitor the course (and correction, if needed be), is nimble yet impactful and more importantly, is more 'associative' in onlookers' minds than being 'dissociative'. Contrast that to a haphazard spinner, which despite knowing the space to maneuver through, needs higher monitoring and while being swift and agile, the probability of being shunned too soon is higher.

While the elements discussed may not be totally alien to most, the approach in which a Product Manager leverages these levers determines the success of any upcoming innovation - especially in the soft-technology space.

For the sake of some further thoughts, is it possible to draw a parallel at a higher zoomed-back level, say, for a Entrepreneur experimenting with a start-up idea? Well, not unlikely per se!

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References:

1. Enterprise Sales (by Y Combinator) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKYVl12VTA
2. Product-led Growth : https://www.smartlook.com/blog/product-led-growth/#:~:text=In%20the%20product%2Dled%20growth,PLG%20boosts%20CLV .
3. PLG in SaaS Solutions : https://www.forbes.com/councils/theyec/2023/10/16/embracing-product-led-growth-the-shift-toward-user-centric-saas-solutions/

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Views expressed in this article are in my individual and personal capacity, and are not to be affiliated to any organization, business or body of people.

No ownership or association is being claimed whatsoever to the quoted resources, entities or models.

Neither criticism nor corroboration intended.