I’m sure you’ve heard it numerous times from numerous managers – what we need is focus! While that may be great advice at a strategic business level, I’ve seen it fail miserably when applied to commercialization of a product. There is no such thing as “just do one thing right” when delivering a new product. Commercialization is complex, and to succeed, you need to accept it and manage it. There are no silver bullets!
Avoiding Complexity
No one inherently likes complexity, so it’s only natural to try avoiding it, or worse, over-simplifying things and pretending that it’s not there. After all, the word “focus” is such a positive term, how can it steer you wrong? Indeed, in the world of business strategy, it’s one of the key ingredients to success. You can’t be everything to everyone, so you need to decide on the core competencies that you will focus on and pick a market where those core competencies can be used to differentiate yourself against the competition. So what’s different about commercialization of new products?
Product details are important
It is rare that any product can rely on a single attribute to make it successful. In most cases, a product needs to satisfy hundreds of attributes and requirements just to be considered useable, much less the best in class. For example, no one would consider a cup holder to be a big differentiator for a new car, but would you purchase a car without any cup holders? And now consider the number of car attributes that really matter – engine, transmission, body design, wheels, tires, brakes, seats, doors, windows, etc. … you get the picture – complicated! While few of these features will be the differentiation that “make the sale”, do a bad enough job on any one of these, and it could be the reason for breaking the sale.
Plus other requirements
And then there are other requirements to consider, such as safety, reliability, manufacturability, serviceability, time to market, development cost, and other government regulations. Samsung and Volkswagen probably didn’t consider “a battery that didn’t catch fire” or “meeting emission standards without cheating” as rallying cries for their development teams, but substantially missing the mark on these mundane requirements cost each of them billions of dollars in the end.
Commercialization is Complex – Accept It!
In the end, commercialization of a new product is complex. To succeed, you need to accept it and manage it. To use a bit of Electrical Engineering jargon, delivering a new product is like feeding a big multi-input AND Gate. If all the inputs are a “1”, the output is a “1”, but if any of the inputs go to “0”, the output goes to “0”. And so it goes w/ commercialization as well: you need to deliver on all of the basic requirements to have a viable product.
Yet you still want differentiation
But just delivering a “me too” product that meets basic usability requirements isn’t going to make you highly successful in the market. You still have to understand the Voice of the Customer and come up w/ innovative solutions that solve the customers’ unmet needs. Indeed, it’s that customer insight and innovation that will differentiate you from your competitors and make you successful. Well … that’s unless you miss one of those basic AND Gate inputs …
No Silver Bullets
Although it’s innovation and product differentiation that will enable you to win in the market, you can’t just focus on that at the expense of all else. There’s no Silver Bullet – you need to pay attention to all the details and balance everything.
Here’s to your success!
- Pete
Pete Rudak
President & CEO
Rudak Engineering