Confianzys Consulting is a Product Management Company

Why be Market-driven? November 17, 2010

As I’d mentioned before, Gabriel Steinhardt, Managing Director of Blackblot, the world’s leading Product Management training organization and author of The Product Manager’s Toolkit conducted a workshop on The Real World of High-Tech Product Management at the recent NASSCOM Product Conclave held in Bangalore.

Judging by the number and variety of questions the audience had for him, product management in practice is definitely challenging and enthusing practitioners in India.

One of the key topics that Gabriel touched upon in his session was the fundamentals of product management as being ‘market-driven’. Interestingly, before getting into the benefits of a market-driven approach, he first discussed two other product delivery strategies – ‘technology driven’ (banks on making a high-tech product and then gaining acceptance) and sales driven (focuses on customizing technology, one customer at a time).

One key learning was that innovation is not really about technology driving products – in fact, most such products, made without regard for market needs, actually fail (usually explained as ‘being ahead of their time’!)

A market-driven product strategy, on the other hand minimizes risk (not eliminates, as Gabriel pointed out to an audience member who wanted a ‘guarantee’!) by creating products that definitely meet a specific need and hence are more likely to be purchased. Some of the other reasons for adopting a market-driven strategy are that markets have become more competitive and fragmented than ever before – leaving little room for trial and error.

In other words, instead of creating a product and just hoping that some features will match what customers want, technology firms really need to wake up to a different way of doing things, where “money becomes a by-product of solving market needs.”