Grow or die! Product fertilizer to grow your top line

Apologies on the overly dramatic, “please-read-me!” title. I figured I’d jump into the pool with the rest of the bloggers attempting to get the attention of the 1.6 billion of you bouncing around the virtual world.

Anyhow, you’re probably familiar with the phrase, “whatever stops growing eventually dies”. And, while I don’t subscribe to this black & white, morbid declaration, we all know that when it comes to your business, growth is essential.

So in the spirit of doing my little part to help get our economy back on its feet, I’ve decided to write a series of brief articles about different growth drivers (tools, frameworks) you can use to grow your products & your business, and perhaps even add a few inches to your height. So let’s get started…


Growth driver #1: develop different versions of your product to suit different usage scenarios

Take mustard. Yes, mustard.

You’re at a baseball game with some friends. Perhaps you’ve enjoyed a few beers. You head out to one of the fine stadium restrooms to reduce your inner-bladder pressure, and you decide to pick up a hotdog on your way back to your seat. Guldens, right? The perfect neon-yellow goo to spread on your ‘dog. No questions asked. Right place, right time. Guldens all the way.

Flash forward 2 months. You find yourself at a very formal cocktail party. Pinkies out, fancy degrees flying about, drinks you would otherwise never drink, people doing their best to inject British-inflexions. You make your way over to the hors d'oeuvre table and sample a selection of finely smoked meats. Grey Poupon, anyone? Again, no questions asked. Right place, right time. It’s a Grey Poupon moment.

(sorry, I just couldn't help but include the most classic Grey Poupon commercial ever produced. enjoy!)



Let's put aside the mustard and put growth driver #1 to work for you:
1. Make a list of the different situations in which your product or service is used (or needed).

2. For each scenario you’ve identified, jot down those characteristics or dimensions that make it different from the other scenarios on your list. Characteristics could include the physical environment, the people you’re with, your main objective at the time you use the product, your main reason for needing the product, the time of year, the activity you’re engaged in at the time you need the product, etc.

3. For each scenario ask yourself what changes you could make to your service in order to provide greater value to your customers given the unique characteristics of the situation.

Examples could include adding complementary services, increasing or decreasing the performance level of certain features or dimensions, adding or eliminating certain features, making changes to physical dimensions of the product, etc. Whatever you come up with, it should be dictated by the unique needs of your customer under the given scenario.

Real-world examples of growth driver #1. Different versions of the product for different usage occasions.

• Candles: For romantic dinners, for keeping the bugs away when camping, for festive holidays, for scenting the air, for birthdays.
• Travel insurance: For safaris, for ski trips, for family vacations, for cruises, for long-stay trips, for international trips.
• Suits: For hot climates, for formal events, for casual events, for outdoor events, for weddings, for funerals.

What other examples can you think of? Please share them with us in your comments.

Happy growing!

-------

Additional posts that discuss growth strategies:

• Innoviation via other worlds: a tool for generating powerful ideas for your business
• Enhance your innovation by tapping your product's value-creation web

Great books that discuss scenario-based product innovation:

• Marketing Imagination, New, Expanded Edition 

• The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty

• What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services
  

read more

Grow or die! Product fertilizer to grow your top line

Apologies on the overly dramatic, “please-read-me!” title. I figured I’d jump into the pool with the rest of the bloggers attempting to get the attention of the 1.6 billion of you bouncing around the virtual world.

Anyhow, you’re probably familiar with the phrase, “whatever stops growing eventually dies”. And, while I don’t subscribe to this black & white, morbid declaration, we all know that when it comes to your business, growth is essential.

So in the spirit of doing my little part to help get our economy back on its feet, I’ve decided to write a series of brief articles about different growth drivers (tools, frameworks) you can use to grow your products & your business, and perhaps even add a few inches to your height. So let’s get started…


Growth driver #1: develop different versions of your product to suit different usage scenarios

Take mustard. Yes, mustard.

You’re at a baseball game with some friends. Perhaps you’ve enjoyed a few beers. You head out to one of the fine stadium restrooms to reduce your inner-bladder pressure, and you decide to pick up a hotdog on your way back to your seat. Guldens, right? The perfect neon-yellow goo to spread on your ‘dog. No questions asked. Right place, right time. Guldens all the way.

Flash forward 2 months. You find yourself at a very formal cocktail party. Pinkies out, fancy degrees flying about, drinks you would otherwise never drink, people doing their best to inject British-inflexions. You make your way over to the hors d'oeuvre table and sample a selection of finely smoked meats. Grey Poupon, anyone? Again, no questions asked. Right place, right time. It’s a Grey Poupon moment.

(sorry, I just couldn't help but include the most classic Grey Poupon commercial ever produced. enjoy!)



Let's put aside the mustard and put growth driver #1 to work for you:
1. Make a list of the different situations in which your product or service is used (or needed).

2. For each scenario you’ve identified, jot down those characteristics or dimensions that make it different from the other scenarios on your list. Characteristics could include the physical environment, the people you’re with, your main objective at the time you use the product, your main reason for needing the product, the time of year, the activity you’re engaged in at the time you need the product, etc.

3. For each scenario ask yourself what changes you could make to your service in order to provide greater value to your customers given the unique characteristics of the situation.

Examples could include adding complementary services, increasing or decreasing the performance level of certain features or dimensions, adding or eliminating certain features, making changes to physical dimensions of the product, etc. Whatever you come up with, it should be dictated by the unique needs of your customer under the given scenario.

Real-world examples of growth driver #1. Different versions of the product for different usage occasions.

• Candles: For romantic dinners, for keeping the bugs away when camping, for festive holidays, for scenting the air, for birthdays.
• Travel insurance: For safaris, for ski trips, for family vacations, for cruises, for long-stay trips, for international trips.
• Suits: For hot climates, for formal events, for casual events, for outdoor events, for weddings, for funerals.

What other examples can you think of? Please share them with us in your comments.

Happy growing!

-------

Additional posts that discuss growth strategies:

• Innoviation via other worlds: a tool for generating powerful ideas for your business
• Enhance your innovation by tapping your product's value-creation web

Great books that discuss scenario-based product innovation:

• Marketing Imagination, New, Expanded Edition 

• The Entrepreneurial Mindset: Strategies for Continuously Creating Opportunity in an Age of Uncertainty

• What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services
  

read more

Innoviation via other worlds: a tool for generating powerful ideas for your business

I'm not quite referring to Mars or Pluto when I say "other worlds". Although, there is no doubt that even a few seconds of stargazing can inspire & fuel your innovation efforts.

By "other worlds" I'm talking a little closer to home than Mars or Pluto. What I am referring to is a great framework for innovation in which we explore other worlds (i.e., people, places or things) that provide the samehigher-order benefits as those provided by our product or service.

The Analogous Worlds Framework consists of three steps:

1. Identifying the higher-order benefit(s) provided by your product/service (e.g., save money, save time, guidance, peace of mind, confidence, social connectedness, pleasure, etc.)
   
2. Making a list of those people, places or things that provide the same higher-order benefit (s)
3. Asking how these "other worlds" that you identified in step 2 go about providing the higher-order benefit. Is there anything about what they do or how they do it which you could incorporate into your product, or use in aspects of your marketing strategy*?

*By marketing strategy, I am referring here specifically to product, price, promotion, distribution, segmentation, positioning, and targeting.

Analogous Worlds Framework - PPT template
click here to download slide (use it, share it!)

The Analogous Worlds Framework: a brief example - BMW
Let's take "the ultimate driving machine" for a test drive through the framework and see what we can come up with...

Step 1: Identify the high-order benefits provided by a BMW:

• Saves time. Transportation inventions such as the automobile have cut down the time it takes to get from point A to point B in dramatic fashion (assuming you don't line in LA).
• Provides feeling of importance; status. This should come as no surprise from the Bimmer.
  
• Provides access; empowerment. BMWs, and cars in general are incredibly empowering tools, enabling people to explore places that otherwise would have been unreachable by foot, horse, bike or train.

Step 2: Make a list of those people, places or things that provide the same higher-order benefit(s):

Analogous Worlds Framework for BMW

Step 3: Ask how these "other worlds" that you identified in step 2 go about providing the higher-order benefit(s). Is there anything about what they do or how they do it which you could incorporate into your product, or use in aspects of your marketing strategy?

Here are a few of many thoughts that come to mind (note that I have bolded those items in the BMW framework above which led to the ideas below):

• The BMW butler. Leverage the butler concept and design an on board, voice-activated, computerized "butler" that can do various tasks for you while you drive - e.g., manage the radio settings, climate control, seat positioning, etc.
  

• The Car Doorman. Leverage the concept of a doorman, and develop a feature that allows drivers to push a button and have the car door open for them, saving them the time & effort of having to open the doors for themselves - an activity which is especially difficult when their hands are full (e.g., when carrying bags of groceries, carrying children).

• In-car Google. Leverage Google's approach to providing access (via pertinent information now!), and develop a voice-activated capability that allows drivers to access information about local traffic, road conditions, local commerce, the "health" of the car, etc.
  

• Your driving anthem. Similar to the Nike+ / iPod "Power Song" feature that allows runners to push a button and listen to their favorite high-adrenaline song, develop a button under the steering wheel which plays your favorite "cruising song" when pushed. This concept leverages the method via which Tony Robbins provides "empowerment".
  

Hopefully the BMW example will give you a taste of the potential power of The Analogous Worlds Framework. It's a framework that effectively "shakes things up" and gets you to think in terms of the higher-order benefit(s) provided by your product, getting you out of the feature-focused, product-centric paralysis that consumes all of us from time to time.

Please feel free to download the framework, pass it along to your friends & colleagues - and more important than anything, use it. Like many tools, the more you use it, the more it will work for you, and help you generate high-impact, game-changing opportunities.

As always, feel free to contact me with any of your thoughts, comments, or questions.

Great books on innovation & creativity

• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition)

• Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas

• The Innovator's Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth

read more

Innoviation via other worlds: a tool for generating powerful ideas for your business

I'm not quite referring to Mars or Pluto when I say "other worlds". Although, there is no doubt that even a few seconds of stargazing can inspire & fuel your innovation efforts.

By "other worlds" I'm talking a little closer to home than Mars or Pluto. What I am referring to is a great framework for innovation in which we explore other worlds (i.e., people, places or things) that provide the samehigher-order benefits as those provided by our product or service.

The Analogous Worlds Framework consists of three steps:

1. Identifying the higher-order benefit(s) provided by your product/service (e.g., save money, save time, guidance, peace of mind, confidence, social connectedness, pleasure, etc.)
   
2. Making a list of those people, places or things that provide the same higher-order benefit (s)
3. Asking how these "other worlds" that you identified in step 2 go about providing the higher-order benefit. Is there anything about what they do or how they do it which you could incorporate into your product, or use in aspects of your marketing strategy*?

*By marketing strategy, I am referring here specifically to product, price, promotion, distribution, segmentation, positioning, and targeting.

Analogous Worlds Framework - PPT template
click here to download slide (use it, share it!)

The Analogous Worlds Framework: a brief example - BMW
Let's take "the ultimate driving machine" for a test drive through the framework and see what we can come up with...

Step 1: Identify the high-order benefits provided by a BMW:

• Saves time. Transportation inventions such as the automobile have cut down the time it takes to get from point A to point B in dramatic fashion (assuming you don't line in LA).
• Provides feeling of importance; status. This should come as no surprise from the Bimmer.
  
• Provides access; empowerment. BMWs, and cars in general are incredibly empowering tools, enabling people to explore places that otherwise would have been unreachable by foot, horse, bike or train.

Step 2: Make a list of those people, places or things that provide the same higher-order benefit(s):

Analogous Worlds Framework for BMW

Step 3: Ask how these "other worlds" that you identified in step 2 go about providing the higher-order benefit(s). Is there anything about what they do or how they do it which you could incorporate into your product, or use in aspects of your marketing strategy?

Here are a few of many thoughts that come to mind (note that I have bolded those items in the BMW framework above which led to the ideas below):

• The BMW butler. Leverage the butler concept and design an on board, voice-activated, computerized "butler" that can do various tasks for you while you drive - e.g., manage the radio settings, climate control, seat positioning, etc.
  

• The Car Doorman. Leverage the concept of a doorman, and develop a feature that allows drivers to push a button and have the car door open for them, saving them the time & effort of having to open the doors for themselves - an activity which is especially difficult when their hands are full (e.g., when carrying bags of groceries, carrying children).

• In-car Google. Leverage Google's approach to providing access (via pertinent information now!), and develop a voice-activated capability that allows drivers to access information about local traffic, road conditions, local commerce, the "health" of the car, etc.
  

• Your driving anthem. Similar to the Nike+ / iPod "Power Song" feature that allows runners to push a button and listen to their favorite high-adrenaline song, develop a button under the steering wheel which plays your favorite "cruising song" when pushed. This concept leverages the method via which Tony Robbins provides "empowerment".
  

Hopefully the BMW example will give you a taste of the potential power of The Analogous Worlds Framework. It's a framework that effectively "shakes things up" and gets you to think in terms of the higher-order benefit(s) provided by your product, getting you out of the feature-focused, product-centric paralysis that consumes all of us from time to time.

Please feel free to download the framework, pass it along to your friends & colleagues - and more important than anything, use it. Like many tools, the more you use it, the more it will work for you, and help you generate high-impact, game-changing opportunities.

As always, feel free to contact me with any of your thoughts, comments, or questions.

Great books on innovation & creativity

• Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking Techniques (2nd Edition)

• Serious Creativity: Using the Power of Lateral Thinking to Create New Ideas

• The Innovator's Toolkit: 50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth

read more

Your product's lemming factor: are you following your competitors off a cliff?

I have seen it happen time & time again... and it always reminds me of the psychology of crowds, and how the individuals within the crowds assume their fellow crowd-members know something they don't know. So the individual continues to follow the crowd, all the while not realizing that the crowd is often an amalgam of equally confused individuals...

The Lemming Effect
Ok, enough of the philo-babble. The "lemming effect" as I call it is no doubt present within many organizations, and all of us at one time or another fall into its trap. Its influence within product management & product development is pervasive, frequently resulting in products that get bulkier & costlier over time. But we would be remiss to equate the proliferation of bells, whistles & "performance enhancers" with greater levels of customer value.

There are many drivers of the phenomenon of "Frankensteining" a product, and the lemming effect is at the top of the list. It all starts when we become more focused on our competitors than on our customers. One day Acme, our arch rival, increases the performance of its product or adds a new feature. "Hmmm", we think to ourselves, "What does Acme know that we don't? Are customers demanding greater levels of performance?" And then, voila, with limited thought or analysis we quickly 'upgrade' our product. Acme no doubts catches wind of our "2.0", and the arms race ensues.

All the while, our customers might not even be looking for the increased performance or the new bell or whistle. Perhaps our target customer looks a little different from Acme's target customer, and have somewhat differing needs. Perhaps Acme's reason for making enhancements to its product were ill-conceived or driven by internal factors that are invisible to us. Regardless of the reason, the one thing we have successfully achieved is increasing the cost of both our product as well as Acme's, who will no doubt follow suite with their "3.0". Whether we're able to "pass along" this incremental cost to our customers in the form of higher prices is something we certainly hope we can do.

Never take your eyes off your customers
The moral of the above faux situation, and of the lemming effect in general is to be wary of the moves that your competitors make. Do not assume the moves they are making are the right ones or that they have generated an insight that has given them the secret to building the perfect service for customers. The remedy to the lemming effect is quite straightforward, yet often ignored. Stay abreast of what your competitors are doing, but keep your eye on the ball - aka, your customers! Stay close to your customers. Develop multiple channels & methods for gaining access to the "voices of your customers". Understand their needs, desires, motivations, decision-making processes, changes in their outlooks or needs, etc. If you do these things right, you will be far less vulnerable to the lemming instinct, and far more confident in product decisions that you choose to make.

read more

Your product's lemming factor: are you following your competitors off a cliff?

I have seen it happen time & time again... and it always reminds me of the psychology of crowds, and how the individuals within the crowds assume their fellow crowd-members know something they don't know. So the individual continues to follow the crowd, all the while not realizing that the crowd is often an amalgam of equally confused individuals...

The Lemming Effect
Ok, enough of the philo-babble. The "lemming effect" as I call it is no doubt present within many organizations, and all of us at one time or another fall into its trap. Its influence within product management & product development is pervasive, frequently resulting in products that get bulkier & costlier over time. But we would be remiss to equate the proliferation of bells, whistles & "performance enhancers" with greater levels of customer value.

There are many drivers of the phenomenon of "Frankensteining" a product, and the lemming effect is at the top of the list. It all starts when we become more focused on our competitors than on our customers. One day Acme, our arch rival, increases the performance of its product or adds a new feature. "Hmmm", we think to ourselves, "What does Acme know that we don't? Are customers demanding greater levels of performance?" And then, voila, with limited thought or analysis we quickly 'upgrade' our product. Acme no doubts catches wind of our "2.0", and the arms race ensues.

All the while, our customers might not even be looking for the increased performance or the new bell or whistle. Perhaps our target customer looks a little different from Acme's target customer, and have somewhat differing needs. Perhaps Acme's reason for making enhancements to its product were ill-conceived or driven by internal factors that are invisible to us. Regardless of the reason, the one thing we have successfully achieved is increasing the cost of both our product as well as Acme's, who will no doubt follow suite with their "3.0". Whether we're able to "pass along" this incremental cost to our customers in the form of higher prices is something we certainly hope we can do.

Never take your eyes off your customers
The moral of the above faux situation, and of the lemming effect in general is to be wary of the moves that your competitors make. Do not assume the moves they are making are the right ones or that they have generated an insight that has given them the secret to building the perfect service for customers. The remedy to the lemming effect is quite straightforward, yet often ignored. Stay abreast of what your competitors are doing, but keep your eye on the ball - aka, your customers! Stay close to your customers. Develop multiple channels & methods for gaining access to the "voices of your customers". Understand their needs, desires, motivations, decision-making processes, changes in their outlooks or needs, etc. If you do these things right, you will be far less vulnerable to the lemming instinct, and far more confident in product decisions that you choose to make.

read more