The Paradigm of Product Success

Published on YourStory, Tuesday, 14 December 2010 08:21

We as entrepreneurs or managers conventionally always link success of a product to its proper development and management.  Thus we get too much into managing it at a technology/manufacturing level and with defined and so called best practice processes. 

I strongly believe that objective of any product for any company must only be its success and the rest must be a plan to achieve that success in the right context.  Practices, processes and paradigms that need to be adopted from operational point of view must be always evaluated, innovated, adapted and then implemented.  In today’s time, just going by the book is not going to help in creating successful and great products as everything traditional is challenged. 

Through this post I attempt to share my thoughts and the C#TMC paradigm that I follow in my ongoing quest to develop required capability in Kreeo, as a technology company with a successful product and business model.

My views below are from a technology company context, but they can quite generically apply to not just technology products but also to non-technology products, solutions, and services. Basically, whatever you wish to sell and earn from, as a company! 

Companies (especially startups) must think of developing not just the right product or offering but the entire capability that will be required to sell successfully, scale up and create competitive edge.

This requires holistic and synergistic effort related to the three perspectives of:

1.    Technology (What is required to build the value?)

2.    Market (What we wish to or can potentially target and how we sell it given the competition?)

3.    Customers (How to delight them and create success stories?)

So what all to consider for developing right capability through TMC (C#TMC)?

Technology Perspective

Technology evolves very fast and thus doing something technically similar to what the best have done with years of evolution is a sure path to failure, always Think Scratch Up to have the leanest and future proof technology.

Develop technology that solves real customer problems, Think Advantage.  Defy the conventional and try to go beyond, that’s the only way to create long term sustainable advantage.

Always have a Clear Vision of what you wish to achieve and don’t be rigid about the path you take.  Learn through closeness to customers & markets and make evolution your DNA. 

Follow an Evolutionary Methodology for development as you will have to aesthetically chisel your creation over a period of time for higher value to customers.  Your own new ideas, customer feedback and competition will ensure that changes are required frequently.

To Design Before Coding is a good habit to have, earlier the better.  It doesn’t matter if the design is on a tissue paper, or in a more structured best practice document template, idea is to think and have clarity before you jump into coding/manufacturing, it will reduce headaches, rework and will effectively support an evolutionary methodology, else you may create a huge mess.

Usability needs to continuously evolve and become better forever.  Having said that, to do it effectively, best is to learn from users/customers.  Talk to them to identify key issues and define what may suit them best.  Key will always be continuous evolution.

Market Perspective

Having a good understanding of the market and trends is very important to stay competitive.

STP & Size: Clearly define your market in terms of technology space, geographies and industries.  You need to have a good understanding of how big is the market in terms of size and what is the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for you.  From the identified market we must identify the relevant segments/industries that are best suited for your product and value proposition. Your product may apply to a wide variety of industries and segments but we must only target the most attractive.  Attractiveness must be identified based on ease of reaching, competitive strengths, sales cycle and price you may command. Once you know your targets it’s very important to work on how to position your offering such that you clearly communicate your proposition and also differentiate it from the competition.

Competition: Today there is no market that has no competition, rather there exist players large and small who all are eating into the pie.  Competition may be direct or indirect, identify both.  So it’s important to keep a tab on how competition is evolving their offerings and you must evolve your value proposition accordingly and identify your niche to create a foothold.

Unmet & Evolving Needs: Even if a market is cluttered with various players, the needs of the customers are not fully met and are always evolving.  So having a good understanding of evolving and unmet needs can give you important ideas on how to adjust your offering.

Customers Perspective

You may think of customers as part of market perspective, but that’s not entirely true.  A market consists of only prospects and competition.  What you win from a market is a customer and is the one who pays.  As soon as a prospect becomes a customer the capability required to successfully manage them is different and requires that focus.  Customer-Capability must be given highest attention for long term and sustainable success of your business.

Work on the following:

• Utility: Identify what features and technical capabilities will help customers get maximum utility from your product and largely out-of-box. 
• Usage: Continuously evolve the UX/UI to help make usage as simple as possible.
• Customization: No one solution will ever fit all customers (especially in technology) and moreover it is good to be agile and evolving. Customization will increase utility and thus also usage.  Find out ways to offer and maintain customizations at least cost for a win-win.  Any innovation here can be a source of competitive advantage.
• Deployment: In the same market and prospect base similar prospects may have different deployment needs.  Sense these needs early and identify the most suited deployment models.  Try to be flexible and responsive.  Time required to get a product implemented for an enterprise is increasingly becoming a key selection criterion.
• Support & Services: Lines between products and services are gone; customers want complete solutions, so deliver offerings that bundle technology and services for minimum hassles and additional burden on customers.
• Relationship: We must focus on making each and every customer delighted by your value and thus create success stories in real sense.  No marketing technique can match word of mouth of a delighted customer.
• Financial: Given the model and offerings we need to look at their financial viability also.  So think, given your product, deployment and services can you do it profitably and scale up.

The path to evolve an offering and create strong value proposition comes out from the Interplay of TMC.  This won’t happen unless we intentionally explore and experiment with each having a bigger and long term picture of the business. We must not see it as mainly a product development or management challenge rather a challenge to develop right-TMC capability over a period of time for successful product and sustainable business.  This insures that the innovation you are creating is solving real problems and is perfectly aligned to user needs thus having high utility and adoption.

Collection of presentations on Enterprise 2.0

Opening presentation from Acando’s Enterprise 2.0 event in collaboration with AIIM, Stockholm September 10th 2009

Getting Real About Enterprise 2.0

View more presentations from Acando Consulting

A presentation about Enterprise 2.0 as innovation and driver of innovation in organizations by Oscar Berg at Acando

Enterprise 2.0 and Innovation

View more presentations from Acando Consulting

How can social media and collaborative technology increase productivity, improve decision-making and strengthen business teams? Introductory presentation by Tom Purves, Enterprise 2.0, Nov 7, 2006

Enterprise 2.0

View more presentations from thomas.purves

How to Use Social Computing to Combat Information Overload

By Nafay Kumail -  10/10/10

Published on CLOMedia

The human mind is a great device that processes information quickly and efficiently. However, its attention span is getting shorter, particularly given the ever-growing demands of various data streams on this rather limited commodity. With the world of information growing at a rapid rate, managing information and knowledge has become ever more complicated.

Some claim that the Internet has all the information people need and that search engines allow people to reach the right information with the click of a mouse. However, it is not as accessible as it is manifest. There’s a lot of information lying deep in the Web that users may never reach; search engines might only present 1 percent of what is available out there. Also, search engines can manipulate searches and push certain results based on a vested interest. They may not always offer information that solves a problem and is in the user’s best interest.

Learners need not only a system of storing relevant and soon-to-be-relevant information, but also something that allows them to structure this information in a way that they can explore based on subjects and topics so that they can tap into the comprehensive knowledge that they collect and others contribute over time.

These methods need to be collaborative. Learning never stops. Collecting information and the gathering of knowledge pieces also never stops. Hence, learners need a system that allows them to not only collect and organize information, but also dynamically update and curate it. It should allow them to record their own insights about, and responses by others to, a particular thread such that it remains tied to the concerned topic and its organization tree. It also should be accessible in real time.

To ensure people do information work effectively and manage it as they go along, learning leaders need to solve the issue of information overload versus limited attention spans at four levels:

1. Getting people together and making them interact in an uninterrupted and friendly environment: This is getting better and better with various communication tools, and social computing has made it much more convenient and simple.

2. Providing people with simple and smart tools of expression, enabling them to express themselves without any binding requirement of formal submission of ideas: It could be a quick answer to a question, a couple of lines of disjointed reaction to an ongoing discussion, a pointer to a particular source, and so on. The demand and insistence on formal presentation of ideas may prevent people from expressing themselves — though they might have ideas and techniques to solve problems. Now tools of expression can be made democratic, open, simple and smart to allow people to collaborate.

3. Helping people access comprehensive knowledge on a topic or subject: This should be structured in such a way that it makes information discovery opportune and just-in-time, leading to enhanced assimilation of knowledge and improvement in working with available materials.

4. Allowing people free expression when they want to comment, update and curate the various items in a comprehensively organized topic: This gives learners the ability to dynamically update content with insights and perspectives and further construct a topic with the latest information and discussions to complete the cycle of collective learning and collaboration.

Social computing tools will have to go beyond just allowing people to share what they are doing and thinking. They also should help people express themselves in whatever way they like. Additionally, they should boost the contributed information structure itself in a way that it becomes easily accessible and leads to the creation of a comprehensive body of knowledge on a topic or subject.

Adoption Challenges for Enterprise Social Platforms

Published on Dataquest

Enterprise 2.0 technologies are inexpensive and attractive; lead to meaningful communication across teams and create contextual knowledge, help improve innovative capabilities, and facilitate solving of critical business problems collectively. Indeed, there is a clear evidence that Enterprise 2.0 technologies are facing protectionist barriers from the companies because of the fear of productivity losses and exposure of critical information. But, how is it that these technologies are not as successful even in companies which consider the new technology as a boon and are trying to leverage them? A closer analysis would reveal that this failure is not due to the technology itself, but because of various adoption challenges that are left unaddressed. In fact, it is the poor adoption that leads to less than desirable impact of an enterprise social platform and may lead to eventual fizzling out of the initiative.

Lack of Motivation Clearly, a large chunk of users feel that when it comes to just-in-time knowledge that matters, it is not always available within and they need to connect with people outside the company as well. In many places, we observe that this connect is not established and solutions that allow users to tap the knowledge in external network without compromising companys information security concerns are not provided. Not only this, the lack of purpose building and not doing enough to connect by the use of social media technology with proper efforts into the advancement of peoples careers also affect the success of such initiatives. The Solution Designing of TechnologyTechnology and tools implemented are often low on reliability and not steady which restrict their use. There is also a lack of alignment of these platforms with the work habits of employees. In the wake of a host of company websites offering a variety of services, it remains difficult for users to refer to and use all of them in combination with social media platforms. As enough focus is not attributed in putting together these technologies as a comprehensive solution, these are not easy to understand and use. Also, since sufficient thought is not given to making it an engaging solution, the usage often drops. Work LinkagesThe intended users already feel the deluge of information and cant see how yet another tool will help them. They end up looking at these initiatives as yet another layer of information management, which it is clearly not. By the same token, they end up considering its output as meaningless interactions and content, and see it as an additional work when they already have so much to accomplish in their daily work routine. They sense a lack of time to contribute and moderate the generation of knowledge content and may end up considering it as an effort-intensive activity. The real content around business issues is generated when all stakeholders are part of the whole and when customers and extended partners are also included in this exercise. For various misguided reasons, some companies often end up not extending the use of social media to clients and partner networks in tandem with its workforce. This reduces the impact. Driving the ChangeSince these technologies are new and rather drastic, there is a need for volunteers and champions to drive it. However, in many places, there is a lack of dedicated resources to drive it. This lack of resources often proves detrimental to its adoption while the blame is attributed to the technology. If the needed drive is missing, especially during the initial phases of the implementation, sufficient content and interaction will not get generated. The ProcessAs people have seen and experienced these solutions to be more democratic in the open web world, they find it difficult and constraining when restrictions are applied unintelligently. This could also be attributed to the lack of harmony between these solutions and processes within the companies. There is enough scope for aligning the social media usage and interaction with the processes in a company, but this aspect is too often ignored rendering people to notice this disconnect which leads to a sense of disillusionment. Senior Management Sponsorship and MandateThe mandate from management, including practical sponsorship from the senior management is a critical success factor for any enterprise-wide solution that is offered as a change from the legacy system. But, because of the social nature of Enterprise 2.0 solutions, any lack of senior management sponsorship becomes much more apparent and negatively affects the overall adoption. Consider a situation where supervisors in various groups neither consciously use these tools nor push their subordinates to use nor pull them into this initiative. This has a rather negative impact on people at large who are actually critical of making it a success. They become rather disoriented because of the lack of perceived willingness of their immediate supervisors. These are some of the key adoption challenges that companies have to keep in mind and address for the successful adoption of Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

Kreeo among Microsoft TechSparks 2010 Finalists

Kreeo is among the top 20 technology companies @ Micorosft Canaan TechSparks 2010.  Organized by YourStory.in and covered by  CNBC TV 18.

Top 5 out of 20 will be selected  in Finals on Fri, 13th Aug @ Bangalore.  

Update:

Kreeo selected among the Top 5 by Audience choice.

Demonstrate your skills not degrees

Sumeet Anand & SM Nafay Kumail

Published on Times Ascent Online , August 06, 2010 at 11:32:03 AM

Gone are the days when only a decent relevant education from a reputed institution resulted in life-long employment bliss. Despite a decent academic background, at every juncture in the career, one has to prove that one has skills for the next larger role 

Changes in the economy have completely transformed the job market in the last couple of decades. India too is struggling to adjust to this reality. In India even today, people with long experience in the traditional sector are thoroughly surprised when they come across an IT professional with a background in sociology or anthropology. Gone are the days when only a decent relevant education from a reputed institution resulted in life-long employment bliss. Today, education alone doesn’t lead to a good employment opportunity. Even if a decently qualified person gets called for an interview, it might not lead to a gainful employment but a much less educated candidate who can convince the interviewer of the relevant skills for the job-on-offer could make it. Even if someone with good educational qualifications gets hired, it may not always lead to a successful career. Despite a decent academic background, at every juncture in the career, one has to prove that one has skills for the next larger role.

Changing priorities of employers

In this rather welcome situation, both people who want to get hired and those who want to hire will have to come to terms with the reality and focus on the right skills. Right from preparing resumes to working towards higher goals in professional life, people need to demonstrate that they have the right skills to be able to execute jobs, learn on-the-job to get better at what they do, and remain on the continuous journey of acquiring the skills for future. These skills are different from the certified knowledge coming from the degrees of the courses completed (however relevant these may be to an industry). This is more so for the job aspirants because the unconditional advantage of having a professional degree is fast withering away. Candidates appearing for a job not just face competition from many equally qualified people but also from less qualified people from no-so-famous colleges who are demonstrably much more skilled at doing things and taking up challenges.

Employers are also increasingly realising that what they need are people who can take up the challenge by using and continuously honing their skills and not only the folks with degrees with higher grades and people coming out of institutes with higher ratings.

The social media connect 

Both experienced professionals and candidates entering the job market have to specially focus on showing their skills to people who are involved in performance assessment and to potential employers. With social computing becoming handy tools for people of all hues, working professionals and going-to-be-working professionals can do great deal of self-branding to show how they have acquired and honed relevant skills to solve problems. Blogs, wikis, online presentations, and answering questions to help solve unique business problems on wider social networks are just a few ways of doing it. Resumes have to also start looking different. In a less than 10-minutes video on YouTube, you can show that you can communicate verbally well but can also demonstrate how well you organise your thoughts and what are the key areas of knowledge and skills you highlight. The first hurdle of being able to communicate is crossed. Now you can easily move on to other better social computing tools that help you in expression and organisation of your portfolio of knowledge, skills and works for prospective employers to explore even before they meet you face to face for a formal interview.