Welcome. Product, Briefly is a collection of one-page briefs about building products and the people who create them, drawn from two decades of work in new ventures spanning a breadth of industries. Each one can be read in five minutes and discussed for an hour. They cover cover different facets of Product work while also serving as examples of the form.
It’s built to be taken apart: use what fits straight away, draw inspiration from the collection, make the rest your own. Take a brief, or make a brief.
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Over the past 20 years, I’ve watched “product development” evolve as a discipline. My entry point was an interdisciplinary one, and at the IDEO-attributed approach of Design Thinking was just beginning its trajectory to drive a field that had historically been a Marketing function since the golden age of Madison Avenue. Later, Agile-inspired fast iteration methodologies would shift the power to Engineering as shipping the MVP and then improving it with customer insights became the prevailing wisdom of the Lean-era. The three legs of the stool - Marketing. Design. Engineering- remained the same, but the locus of control shifted with the zeitgeist, as people talked about IDEO’s shopping carts, Steve Blank’s epiphany, while everyone moved fast and things broke.
During that time, my hands got dirty building almost every possible type of product: business services, enterprise technology, mobile apps & consumer web, ad-tech, consumer electronics, cloud computing, vehicle electrification, energy storage for renewables and nuclear… the list goes on.
However, it was the simplest products that taught me the most, the ones where there was no complexity to hide behind when the Market loved it (or didn’t).
Markets are dynamic ecosystems. The path of progress constantly reshapes them, rarely fast as a seismic shift erupting and more often slow and powerful like a glacier that pushes mountains and leaves valleys. In this wake, new flora and fauna fight to flourish. The slow massive changes are more common and powerful, but don’t make for entertaining news stories.
Everyone is impacted by forces of progress, and anyone who wants to pay attention can observe the struggle for life in the new niches exposed. Viewpoints scale as fractals, with increasing scope and time. Life in the pond formed after the storm, which evaporates in summer. Vibrant forests, ravaged by fire, regrow and their ecosystem re-evolves over decades. Oceans retreat to leave shells in a desert now supporting mice and owls and lizards for millennia. Stars collapse, leaving black holes in the universe with such gravity that matter and light can’t escape.
The universe hates a vacuum. Pay attention. Look where progress leaves voids in its wake, and the opportunities are always endless.
Explore edges
Markets pull products. If you’ve got a Product in mind but the Market boundaries blur, look more closely. Here’s what you might see:
New entries ravage ecosystems thought to be stable. We used to have a record industry, they sold CD’s too. Until the internet enabled digital music, then the Walkman got eaten by the MP3 player. The smartphone had headphones, and it ate the MP3 player and then streaming ate the Record industry. I love my vinyl collection, but not because it’s easier to use or more convenient or cheaper or sounds better.
Whipsaws. Oscillations jerk a system around, rippling customer preferences because we buy based upon emotions not logic and scarcity hits hard. Gas prices have made big cars smaller, then bigger, then hybrid, then electric, then hybrid again, then who knows. The one thing that consistently changes is what to look for, but its reverberations keep opportunities endless.
Needs that never change. Water, shelter, food, joy: people can’t have happy lives without them, and those same people have harbored vices since forever. All of this is fair game, but personally I’d rather work on exhilarating music experiences or abundant clean energy than vapes and making everything gambling. You do you. What always changes is the present - so how can what we have at hand today and can expect tomorrow be applied to what never changes?
All of these examples reveal a connected system, where change creates a void where a product that’s the right shape fits in at the right time.
Bring this brief to your team to discuss the true shape of your Market opportunity. When blind spots emerge - they typically do - consider a sprint tighten up Market Requirements. Let your product respond to Market pull, rather than fight with a push.
Holes in the Universe
Market, Unmet Needs, and the void your Product fills
Customers, Users, and competition are part of your Market - but focusing only on these is like looking at the seashore and saying the landscape is just the water while ignoring the sand, grasses, and gulls. Market is the environment in which a Product lives, so understand the Market in such a way so that you thrive within its vibrant interconnected ecosystem.
What is your hole in the universe?
This question cuts to the core of a Market opportunity: a bounded emptiness waiting to be filled. Define your corner of the universe and describe the boundaries of a void in detail. What do the surrounding edges look like – and what are their fluctuations? How might a Product have interfaces that interlock to shift in this dynamic environment? What causes things to move?
Unmet Needs not Problems
Builders see a Problem and feel an urge to solve, but this may be premature. Solution pushing leads teams astray by focusing on what works rather than what’s wanted, and the intricacies of solving can overshadow the environment that a Problem exists within. Problem statements spawn debates about “how painful is this, and are we making a Vitamin, Painkiller, or Cure?“
Voids have gravity. Markets pull. How strong is the Unmet Need? What’s the tension to meet it?
Joy is lovely example. Mental gymnastics to justify something as a Problem worth solving become unnecessary when “here’s how this will make people 10x happier” is valid.
Questions to clarify a Hole in the Universe and Unmet Need
Who do you seek to serve: Who is the User, who is the Customer, & what’s the difference?
What one simple thing improves 10x in the User’s life thanks to your Product?
What’s the path between Awareness that your product exists and full-adoption?
What’s the lifetime of the Customer look like: how long is it, and how much will they pay?
What makes the User experience seem to Customers like it’s worth more than the price?
How do Users tell others about your Product - how early and how often does that happen?
What other things is a Customer compelled to spend money on instead of your Product?
How does the Customer find out about alternatives, and where do you fit in?
Have you found a compelling Positioning statement for your product?
Build Products with pull
Cascade from a Market with an Unmet Need into a Product that delivers on Specifications:
Market Requirements clarify the void in the universe you intend to fill.
Product Requirements describe the thing that you think will fill that void.
Technical Requirements spell out how to deliver what fills the void to Specifications.
Originally published on productbriefly.com
Map your space
Invest 30 minutes with your team, using the brief to prompt a Market discussion. Look for surprising connections and hidden opportunities.
Get a sense of how well you all understand the environment, your role in it, and the boundaries of the hole you seek to fill. If if feels incomplete, consider putting together a Market Requirements Doc (MRD) that will let you see the space carved out for your Product.
