Product Discovery At Google

Product Discovery @ Google John Gibbon 9/1/09

Features and Products

Products and Product Lines

Mary Cagan: High Fidelity Prototypes

Product Discovery

I am the VP of Emerging Technologies at AECOM a Fortune 500 engineering, design, planning, and consulting services for large-scale public and private projects in the transportation, environmental, buildings and energy sectors.

These notes are primarily from a class I taught at Stanford in their Continuing Studies Program.

Internal

Stakeholders & Experts,

Clients

Site Analytics, Surveys, Client Visits, Informal Conversations, Usability Testing,

Outside Experts

Your Network, Partners/Suppliers, Magazines, Trade Associations Conferences, Market Influencing Clients

Internet and Published Sources

Blogs, Traditional Publications, Trade Journals, Competitor websites, Google, Quantcast, Company listings (Hoovers, Tradevibes), Tradeshows, Industry Research (Forrester, Gartner, Yankee, IDC, Giga)

Other

Market and Demographic Analysis, Other Industry Best Practices

Where Get Product and Feature Ideas?

-Revenue

-Market Share

-New Users

-Increase Usage

-Increased Customer Satisfaction: NPS

-Other?

Consider What Are Your Success Metrics

The Biggest Roadblock to Effective Product Strategy in Most Companies is Lack of effective Product Innovation Funnel

Product Innovation Funnel

Analyze and prune at every stage

How (metric?)

Who (PM, VP, Product Board)?

OK to fail

Why Supporting Sales (Customer Support) Isn’t too Bad …

While training sales is required and

Customer surveys and site analytics are important

Talking to actual users is imperative

Basic client analysis (Using WULA. It is amazing what you learn; and what the company thinks about the customer is wrong.)

WULA

Who are you?

Your company, your role (analyst, “Mom”)

What do you do?

What problems trying to solve? How do you provide value?

Win:

Why us? What didn’t like?

Usage:

What problems solving with what features?

Loss / Attrition:

Why not us? How solving now? Is there a feature / issue resolved in which consider later?

Ideas for Products and Product Lines

Where should we go?

Why will we be successful there?

How do we get there?

Problem?

Opportunity

Solution?

Unique offering or breakthrough (IP)

Why you? Competition?

Business Model

How make money?

Money need?

Team

Company or Product Portfolio Strategy

Where Should We Go? Is There An Opportunity?

Is there customer pain?

Is the pain sufficient to generate a compelling reason to buy?

PAIN REASON TO BUY Sue Barsamian: “Reality Marketing for Startup”

Is The Opportunity Big and Growing?

Are there enough customers with this profile to make a market?

Is it growing?

Sue Barsamian: “Reality Marketing for Startup” PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY PAIN REASON TO BUY

How To Size Your Market

Build a tops down and bottoms-up model for your market

Sue Barsamian: “Reality Marketing for Startup”

Empirical

Qualitative research

Your revenue and unit forecast

Analyst data

Proxy modeling

Total Market Total Addressable Market Your Projected Share

Why will we be successful there?

-Core Competencies / Differentiation

-Mission

-Competitive Analysis

How do we get there?

-Financial / Dev Plan

-Tech Strategy

-Partnering Strategy

Strategic Trade-offs

The Boston Consulting Group’s Growth-Share Matrix Accelerate a Few Divest Most Liquidate Harvest Invest 20%- 18%- 16%- 14%- 12%- 10%- 8%- 6%- 4%- 2%- 0 Market Growth Rate 10x 4x 2x 1.5x 1x Relative Market Share .5x .4x .3x .2x .1x Dogs 8 7 3 ? Question marks ? ? 2 1 Cash cows 6 Stars 5 4

Ansoff Matrix: Product Strategy Market Penetration Product Development Market Development Current Products Future Products Current Markets Future Markets Know Customers and Market Rich Product Offerings

New Product vs. Mature Product

New Market vs. Existing Market

Short Term vs. Long Term Revenue

Usage vs. Revenue

Client A vs. Client B

Research vs. Development

High Risk vs. Low Risk

Trade-Offs

But Try to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant (Kim and Mauborgne) Red Ocean Strategy Blue Ocean Strategy Compete in existing market space Create uncontested market space Beat the competition Make the competition irrelevant Exploit existing demand Create and capture new demand

Marty Cagan and Product Discovery