Product Development Strategy Examples and Key Stages

The first step is idea generation, where you systematically brainstorm new product ideas based on real-world problems, existing market products, and basic target audience research. So, an existing product can also be marketed to a different demographic or market. This involves targeting business rather than individual customers, expanding the product to a broader area, or marketing towards people of a diverse age group.

Here the target customer wants to check the quality of the product, and the free sample would convince them to purchase the premium and paid version of the product. The free trial offer shows customers what they would receive from the product. In the end, you will have a few ideas that are worthy of implementation. You might not know but Samsung was once just a local company with little consumer demand. But building a strategy, including a powerful marketing strategy, has brought Samsung to where it is today.

Google’s product development strategy

It strategy is a term that refers to all the actions and methods used when bringing new or modified existing products to market to generate new revenue and new business. Instead, it is a set of strategies, plans, and actions applied at different stages of the product development life cycle to introduce the designed product to the market and sustain growth. However, careful planning is essential to minimize the risk of making mistakes. To avoid failures and ensure that the program delivers the expected benefits, measurable objectives must be set and progress reviewed at each stage of product development.

Product management is all about adapting and modifying your current products to create, innovate, and actualize ideas. This is to create a newer version of a product already existing in the market. Slight changes in the already present version can motivate the market to buy the improved performance. This particular strategy focuses on introducing or improving the features that the client would want to see. Product strategy is a great way to identify new opportunities, assess the effectiveness of a company’s product, and help develop its long-term strategic plans.

The main leader is the product manager, who oversees all product tasks related to ideation, research, development, and product launch. Many companies tend to focus on one product based on their customers. Some decide to provide a solution to an existing problem through their product. But no matter what, the chances are they will fail somewhere until they have a proper strategy. We can have the best idea generation and better product ideas, but it won’t work much without a strategy.

An innovative product is a product that is fundamentally different from other existing products. They are an absolute innovation on the market which has no analogs. Coca-Cola has a strategy that is all about the voice of the customer. “If we embrace where the consumer is going, our brands will thrive, and our system will continue to grow. This is Our Way Forward,” said then Coke President and COO James Quincey in 2017.

• This is because there were no visible results from companies that could be trusted.
• It was first published in 1957 in the Harvard Business Review, in an article called ‘Strategies for Diversification’, to discuss new product development strategies.
• As a rule, companies that are the first to enter the market reap the benefits.
• An application or product’s lifecycle is affected by user requirements and advances in technology.

As a product manager, you’re trying to balance the commercial side and the user side. Leaning on internal teams such as Customer Support and Research to champion the user’s voice for me is the best route to go. I think a clear strategy is really what differentiates the companies that move fast from the others. If you know what you want to achieve and communicate it clearly to your teams, they will be able to find the best way to reach the goal. It maximizes the time and energy of all the people who work in your company. At a certain point in your business, a growth plateau will be reached.

Benefits and Risks of a Product Development Strategy

You are risking your business to threats from unexpected competition. Salita is now a member of StartupLab, the biggest startup incubator in Norway. It was featured by the PUBLIC.io Team in their list of the most startups set to transform Europe’s GovTech market.

For example, the removal of the 3.5mm jack from smartphones wasn’t received well by consumers since it meant using wireless earphones. To counter that, companies started to make Type-C cable earphones because that’s what the market wanted. When choosing ideas, there are two things you should look at – profitability and utility. Idea screening is just filtering all your ideas and choosing a few good ones.

The problem with this strategy often arises if the cultures of the merging companies are too different. Companies that lose their customer focus in the merger tend to do poorly with this strategy. We’re looking for experienced entrepreneurs and leaders that want to turn their ideas into a High Alpha company.

It is increasingly focused on providing high-quality original content for gluing the eyeballs to the screen. Netflix relies on a solid and reliable brand that promises to “enjoy movies easily.” Its strong brand, ease of use, and personalization make copying difficult for competitors. This is superior to the waterfall approach because it allows you to move back and forth as new user requirements arise throughout the development cycle. Waterfall and agile development phases are similar, but their software development methods differ. The advantage of Agile is that it speeds up the software development process while maintaining communication and synchronization between development teams.

Product Development Strategy – Definition, Types, Examples

The idea behind the package deal is that it’s a limited-time offer and customers wouldn’t get it from anywhere. Test every aspect of your product concept — from features and branding to messaging and appeal — to set your product up for success. If you’re wondering how you can deliver a product development strategy, let’s explore some examples of companies deploying their own. Reactive product development strategies are used by companies that respond to changing market situations, sometimes under pressure. Glen Urban and John Houser go one step further when, in 1980, they identified 9 product development strategies. Metrics are the fourth key element to a winning product development strategy.

Start testing things out and get ready to launch a successful product. As we saw, there are different approaches to product development. But whatever strategy you choose, here are some simple steps to develop and execute a successful new product development strategy.

How to create a new product development strategy?

When a company has a clearly defined https://globalcloudteam.com/, there will be a better sense of how to allocate resources and estimate timeframes throughout the development cycle. As we know, Starbucks is a coffeehouse where people come to drink coffee, tea, and snacks. So it has to develop new products and services for its customers, especially for special requests such as non-coffee lovers.

Netflix’s core offer is a subscription including unlimited access to content. It has increasingly focused on providing high quality original content to pin eyeballs to screens. Netflix relies on a strong, trustable brand promising “movie enjoyment made easy.” Its strong brand, ease of use, and personalization are difficult for competitors to duplicate. The design thinking and double diamond model processes are essential for product design and innovation processes.

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The P development strategy provides you an opportunity to increase the sale of the current product with new features and functions. It lowers the risk factor in the product development stages, develops a link between the product and the market, and reconstructs the product line. He started his career in product management at a healthcare tech startup in Kansas City.

Accelerating Growth Through Data Science

Starbucks, develop its own product and also get them from other suppliers. This means they have to do product development by themselves or get it from other suppliers. Once the product development process officially starts, you can’t go back and think of new ideas to implement. Any methodology that’s changed during the process can cause lag and delays.

It would allow you to target non-responsive customers with the new product idea. In order to do that, you should conduct thorough market research to know the needs and wants of customers, so that you could develop the product accordingly. It’s when you create a new product that is relevant to your current product line. While doing so, you should offer such features in the product that the customers are looking for it. Only the new product line would expand the sale if it would complement the features of the current product.

Apple bets that customers will pay a premium for superb products and tends to focus on optimizing existing offerings. Apple relies on brand loyalty and is happy to allow competitors to control the market in lower-priced products that compete with Apple’s. The initial stage of the product development process begins by generating new product ideas. This is the product innovation stage, where you brainstorm product concepts based on customer needs, concept testing, and market research. The product development process describes the six steps needed to take a product from initial concept to final market launch. This includes identifying a market need, researching the competition, ideating a solution, developing a product roadmap, and building a minimum viable product .

Increase customer loyalty, revenue, share of wallet, brand recognition, employee engagement, productivity and retention. With a holistic view of employee experience, your team can pinpoint key drivers of engagement and receive targeted actions to drive meaningful improvement. World-class advisory, implementation, and support services from industry experts and the XM Institute.

For example, IKEA is well known for its consistent supply of sturdy furniture at a low cost. The company is able to provide these products as they buy and sell in volume in lots of locations, so the supply chain processes are able to offset higher costs. The company is also able to diversify by offering a variety of designs, which helps give customers design options. What’s crucial is that despite IKEA’s furniture coming at a low and accessible price, many of its products are top-notch. The use of a reactive product development strategy would work where companies don’t have influence over distribution, patents or market protection and resources are tight. Your product development strategy can make use of the market research work you’ve already done.

Not only does the product development process help simplify a launch, but it also encourages cross-team collaboration with teamwork and communication at the forefront of the process. The product development process has evolved in recent years and is now commonly used by dividing each step into six separate phases. This helps better organize the process and break individual top trends in product development deliverables into smaller tasks. These strategies not only help companies achieve their business objectives, such as entering new markets, selling more to existing customers or winning business from competitors. They can also generate greater profitability and increased revenue. Google uses technology “to solve big problems, big times.” This is a market-oriented approach.

If your business has solid data for your target market, you can assess and aim to meet their needs by building solutions. It’s always worth looking at how leading brands are solving emerging problems or reacting to changes in consumer trends. A platform approach to product development strategy represents a way of optimizing innovation. Usually, the platform is the result of many years of research and development, and codifies all the efforts resulting from one or more innovative concepts. A platform’s greatest benefit is that it maximizes the revenue and business impact of an invention by spreading across different new product offerings. Oftentimes this is best illustrated by showing the relationships between platforms and derivatives in a product roadmap.