Product Alchemy
It’s impossible to break down visionary product leadership into a science, but this is the closest I’ve come.
Start with empathy: something you feel personally passionate about. That can be a problem you want to solve, or see solved in the world, or simply something you find exciting. Follow your personal curiosity. If you don’t, you will likely run out of steam when the going gets tough.
Be curious about people and problems, but equally, be curious about both the frontiers of technology, and the tried-and-true wisdom of product and company building that has been passed down over generations. We live in a truly amazing time, where new knowledge is being created faster than ever before in history – and equally, old wisdom is being shared faster than ever before in history.
It also helps to train yourself to be curious about everything. That way, you have a much broader canvas of opportunities to become passionate about something.
Now, find a market. If you have a problem, or an excitement, then all you need to do is find more people with that problem or excitement. A market is simply a group of people who all have the same problem, need, or desire.
Not all markets are created equal; some are big, some are small. Some are easy to access, some are difficult. Some are made of homogeneous subgroups, some are made of infinitely many heterogeneous subgroups. Choose your market wisely.
Once you’ve chosen your market, you need to understand the people in it (by doing discovery / user research / customer development – all mostly synonyms for the same idea: develop empathy outside of yourself, but contained within the chosen market). Get a clear picture of exactly what their problems, pains, aspirations and goals are. Develop expertise in this quickly.
Now that you understand the demand side of the market, you need to understand the supply side: your competitors. In other words, who else out there is attempting to solve the problems you discovered through your research? Where are they succeeding? Where are they falling short? What opportunities have they undervalued or overlooked? What obvious insight are they missing?
You have filtered the global set of opportunities by the ones that are still available to be improved upon.
Now comes the fun step, where you get to create, and not merely observe. It’s time for a solution.
Combine your empathy for the problem with your knowledge of the competition with your knowledge of tools to solve their problem with the wisdom of company and product builders before you.
Here’s an example of Steve Jobs and the iPhone:
1. Empathy (People & Problem)
Flip phone browsers — and all smartphone browsers at the time — were painful, nearly impossible to use.
Physical keyboards and styluses were clunky, inflexible, and got in the way of what people wanted to do.
People prefer simplicity — fewer steps, less clutter, less to manage.
2. Market (How many share this problem?)
MP3 players: huge, rapidly growing market of people consuming digital media.
Mobile phones: massive, established market that wasn’t going anywhere.
Web browsing: increasingly fundamental to modern life, creating rising expectations for mobile access.
3. Competitors (Who else? Where do they fall short?)
BlackBerry: optimized for email, but poor web/media experience.
Nokia/Motorola/PDAs: fragmented hardware, complicated software, weak user experience.
4. Technology (What tools are available?)
Capacitive multitouch was maturing fast enough to bet the product on.
Apple’s experience in iPod hardware and OS X gave UI and media foundations.
5. Wisdom (How to make it sustainable & scalable?)
Learn from previous companies who achieved success via hardware + software + service integration: Nintendo (console + games + network), IBM (mainframes + software + support).