Product strategy

• Do you have an enterprise product strategy?
• Communicating Product Strategy
• Product strategy, to be successful, needs to be ^[1]:
  • The strategy needs to be clearly articulated (legibility)
  • The action needs to swiftly follow the the strategy (synchronicity)

Product Strategy vs Company Strategy

• Company Strategy -> How the business will succeed
  • Go into market X
  • Portfolio of products and how investment will happen
  • Guiding policy for the entire organization
  • A strategic hypothesis that is validated through product work
• Product Strategy -> How will the product succeed
  • Build solution Y
• Product strategy is only one piece of the company strategy, there's marketing strategy, sales strategy, etc.

I often use the analogy that you could make beautiful, high-end seven-fingered gloves and your product might actually be perfect – it’s just the market is very, very, very small. – Des Traynor, Co-founder of Intercom

• Seven Fingered Hands is the market (company strategy)

• The glove is the product strategy

• Slack vs Discord -> Similar product decisions but different company strategy

• Ikea's product has augmented reality features. That's product strategy but not the company strategy.

• Instagram vs LinkedIn Stories -> Similar product decisions but different company strategy

• If executives are making tactical decisions, such as the product or features to invest in

• There is always the feedback loop from product to the business. The failures, successes, experiments, or discovery should and will inform the company strategy

Resources:

• SVPG Product Strategy vs Business Strategy

Notes

• Deciding what to do (feeling good about the decision)

• Ways to communciate what to do

• Level of uncertainity

• Collecting feedback on the product strategy

• GIST Goals Ideas Steps Tasks

• Opportunity Solution Tree

• Strategy pages for more general strategy approaches.