10. Agenda
1. Product Strategy & developing strategic mindset
2. Components of a Product Strategy
3. Communicating to Stakeholders
11. Product Strategy
“a set of choices a company makes to achieve business objectives”
what Products to develop which Market Segments to focus on how to Differentiate & Win how to Position, Price & Sell
a sound Product Strategy will
▪ Outline & clarify the core business values & objectives
▪ Define a Plan to achieve a vision
▪ Guide allocation of organizational resources to deliver results
▪ Focuses on short term execution while keeping an eye on the goal
lack of Product Strategy leads to
▪ Too much emphasis on the short term
▪ No real goal to execute towards
▪ Vague, Incomprehensible strategy
13. Frameworks & Concepts
▪ 5C & 4P Marketing Mix
▪ Porter’s 5 Forces
▪ Jobs to be done
▪ Network Effects
▪ Aggregation Theory
▪ Moats
Resources
▪ “The Business of Platforms”
▪ https://stratechery.com/
Tips
▪ step back
▪ take a broad sweeping view of world
▪ evaluate what-ifs
▪ synthesis as well as analysis
A Product Mindset
14. Agenda
1. Product Strategy & developing strategic mindset
2. Components of a Product Strategy
3. Communicating to Stakeholders
15. Ideation Product Definition
Prototyping
Design & Development
Validation
Commercialization
Markets Trends
Competitive & Ecosystem
Advantage
Customer Needs
Total Addressable Market
Product Vision
Key Features &
Differentiators
Target Market
Goals
Roadmap Business Model
Go-to-Market
Opportunity sizing
16. Agenda
1. Product Strategy & developing strategic mindset
2. Components of a Product Strategy
3. Communicating to Stakeholders
17. Marketing
Finance
Engineering
Sales & BD
Service & Support
Market & Customers
Product Management
• Investment/costs
• profitability
• time to first $
• serviceability of target customer
segments
• feasibility of current
tools/channels
• training
• incentives & quotas
• tradeoff – why build this v/s that
• technical feasibility
• value prop
• segmentation & positioning
• messaging
18. Best Practices
● Know your audience – highlight how their work contributes to the product’s success, how their
needs fit into the overall context of the product strategy
● Over communicate
● brown bags, all-hands, posters, shareable roadmap & scorecards
● Big rocks v/s sand – carve out time separately for strategy, repeat every six months, org not static
(people come and go), company goals change - periodic communication & refresh is needed
● Looking at long-term v/s short-term
● Possess grit and conviction to the longer term product strategy
19. Practice
● Entering or expanding on a market
○ What if Amazon were to sell houses?
○ Should DoorDash deliver packages (B2C, C2C)?
● Change Business Model
○ What if search was a subscription product?
○ Why doesn’t Uber own vehicles?
● Build a business on top of a new technology
○ How would Toyota build an autonomous car?
○ How would FedEx use autonomous trucks?