1. The document discusses adopting a product thinking mindset and platform evolution. It emphasizes developing a product-centric business model and culture. 2. Platform evolution can help ensure a more sustainable and resilient business model by facilitating interactions between producers, consumers, and partners through a technological infrastructure that scales rapidly. 3. Adopting a product thinking approach involves skills like design thinking, customer centricity, experimentation, and analytics to continuously improve products and sustain customer interest.

1. PRODUCT MANAGEMENT TALK
28 FEB 2021
Tan Liong Choon
Senior Lecturer/consultant
Digital Products and Platforms Practice, Institute of Systems Science
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OVER GRADUATE
PROGRAMME
ALUMNI
6,620
OFFERING OVER
ENTERPRISE IT, INNOVATION
& LEADERSHIP PROGRAMMES
TRAINING OVER
148,000
DIGITAL LEADERS
& PROFESSIONALS
150

2. TAN Liong Choon
Senior Lecturer & Consultant
Digital Products & Platforms, ISS
Focus Areas:
Consulting and teaching for continuing professional
development at ISS, and helping customers drive
success through digital product management best
practices.
linkedin.com/in/liong‐choon‐tan‐708b012b
CITPM (Senior), COMIT (Senior), PMP®, CSM, BPMm
Blackblot™ Maser Product Management Professional

3. Agenda
1. Product Thinking Mindset Product-centric business model and product-centric culture.
2. Platform Evolution Ensure a more sustainable and resilience business model
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Digitalisation is spreading like wild fire across all industries. A bank is now a technology
company operating in the financial-services business. A car is a “computer software with
wheels”. Business are grappling with what it means to thinking and operating like a Tech
Unicorn. One key strategy is to move to a product-centric business model and product
thinking culture.

4. 1. PRODUCT THINKING MINDSET
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
- Peter Drucker
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5. Project Management vs Product Management
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Project Manager Product Manager
Owns HOW and WHEN Owns WHAT and WHY
Focus on Resources, Scope, Time
and Cost
“Fixed Mindset”
Focus on Customers, Markets,
Trends, Revenue
“Growth Mindset”
Manages the Project Schedule
“Handover to Operations”
Manages the Product Roadmap
“Cradle to Retirement”
Is successful if the product is
successfully delivered
“Output Focus”
Is successful if the customer is
buying and using the product
“Outcome Focus”

6. 360o View of the Digital Product Manager –
Work Span Across Disciplines
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Digital
Product
Manager
Executives
Funding
Agencies
Customers
Channels
Sales
Marketing
Engineering
Partners
Operations
Support
WHY? - What problem/need are
we solving?
3. Who are the customers?
4. How do we find them?
8. Where can the customer get help
(e.g. in using the product)?
7. Who do we need help from?
*supporting agencies / partners
6. What is the solution?
(& How to build it?)
5. How do we get the solution to them?
2. How do we get funding?
1. Is there a business case?

7. Product Management
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Product
Management
Sales
Operations
Executives
Partners
Engineering
Marketing
Press/
Analyst
Customers
Support
Channel
• A discipline distinct from the others. It is not Project Management, not UX
design, not sales, not engineering
• Involves transdisciplinary skills
Accountability of Product Management
• Responsible for overall product success.
• Central contact point for all aspects of product
• Vision and strategy
• Owns the whole product i.e. the entire customer
experience
• Roadmap / requirements
• Leading the team
Source : Adapted from Brian Lawley, Product Management for Dummies

8. Product Thinking
Mindset
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The Product Thinking
“Alphabet Soup”
Learn More: Product Thinking for Organisations
https://www.iss.nus.edu.sg/executive-education/course/detail/product-
thinking-for-organisations-/digital-products-platforms

9. A is for Agile Development Approach
Product Management
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9
• Minimised cone of uncertainty
• Effective Feedback and Learning
through:
• User Experience of iterative and
incremental real working
software (features)
• Changes incur no waste or only
minimal rework
Traditional Big Bang Approach
 Large Cone of Uncertainty
 User Feedback based on:
– Documents (traditional)
– Changes involved substantial
waste and rework
Small “chunk”, Iterative Approach

10. B is for Big Data and Analytics
• Mobile phones are pre-loaded with apps e.g. health and
fitness:
• It tracks how many steps you take?
• How many calories you burned?
• What is your heart rate? etc ….
i.e. not only is the data collection process automated, turning the data
into useful information is also automated.

11. B is for Big Data and Analytics – cont’d
You can also combine the data with other data
e.g. comparing your meal intake data with health guidelines
to help you maintain healthy diet or to lose weight.
Big Data is not just about volume. It is about the ability to connect different
databases to form a bigger picture, and analytics to create new
information and value.

12. C for Customer Centricity
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Source:b2binternational.com
Problem-Solution Fit

13. Caveat
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1
3
2
“Is there a gap in the market?” Problem‐Solution Fit
“Is there a market in the gap?”
“How to scale the product?”
Product‐Market Fit
Product‐Channel Fit
Problem-Solution Fit is only one aspect of the product management success.
Learn More: Strategic Product Market Fit
https://www.iss.nus.edu.sg/executive-education/course/detail/strategic-product-market-fit-/digital-products-platforms

14. D for Design Thinking
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15. Design Thinking
- Customer Research and Asking the Right Question
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“…Because how we see a problem, the questions we ask about it, shape our
solutions. If we misrecognize our problems, we cannot be surprised when we
cannot come up with solutions that solve.”
- Assoc. Prof Teo You Yenn, School of Social Science, NTU
How do we deter motorists
from speeding on the road?
Fines $$$ & penalty
demerit points

16. Design Thinking – cont’d
- Asking the Right Question and Customer Research
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How do we incentivize
motorists to not speed on the
road?

17. E is for Experimentation
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What IS NOT an MVP?
- MVP is not version 1 of a product
- not a cheaper version of the product
- not a lower quality version of a product
- not a barest/least feature set version of a product
Purpose: Validate Idea Early and gain customer insights
How?: Deploy early with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
What IS an MVP?
A version of a new product that allows the team to collect the maximum amount
of validated learning about customers with the least amount of effort. – it
validates (learn fast) or invalidates assumptions fast (fail-fast)

18. Continuously Iterate, Evolve and Improve
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Iterate your MVP while Always Keeping Customer Value in mind:
• Get feedback to improve and also evolve what feature to do next to
sustain the customer interest
ITERATIVE

19. 2. PLATFORM EVOLUTION
“Even better products can disappear with alarming rapidity.
By contrast, ecosystems that delight customers are difficult to build but,
once built, are difficult to compete with.”
- Steve Denning, business writer, Forbes magazine
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20. The Traditional - Pipeline Business
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International Congress of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID)
Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)
Design a service or
product
Manufacture
Product
Offer for sale or
deliver the service
Customer
purchase the
product/service
Pipeline Business (Linear value chain)
Producers Consumers
Industry era: Large monopolies based on supply economies of scale; cost of creating per unit of
product/services – Competitive advantage is the cost efficiency (e.g. price, distribution).
Barriers to competition from new entrants are high

21. Heightened Competition in the Digital Era
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• New Products can be conceived and built anywhere.
• Customers can discovered them very rapidly.
• “Means of production” can now be rented
– Even an entire global supply chain can now be set up at a marginal
cost of producing a new product.
• Sources of and access to capital is larger and also easier.

22. Platforms & Ecosystems
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Internet era: tech giants command market share base on demand economies of scale; efficiencies
in social networks, demand aggregation, app development, and other factors that makes the
network bigger and more valuable to users. Competitive advantage is the network effect.
2-sided Network Effect
International Congress of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID)
Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA)
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA

23. Example of a Platform with 2-sided Network
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2-sided Network Effect
https://tradeledger.io/
More Demand
(Borrowers)
More Lenders
(Banks + Non-banks)
Wider Coverage
(e.g. geography)
More product Options
Lower Cost of
Borrowing
• A Lending-as-a-Service (LaaS) platform for
digital business finance.
• Provides banks and lenders with a platform
of pre-built components including:
• API connectors
• Customer application & onboarding workflows
• Credit analytics
• Invoice management
• User & account management,
• Data transformation & mapping
• Reports and Dashboards …

24. Platform Playbook
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https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Business%20Functions/McKinsey%20Digital/Our%20Insights/The%20platform%20play%20How%20to%20operate%20like%20a%20tech
%20company/The-platform-play-How-to-operate-like-a-tech-company.ashx

25. Products vs Platforms
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Product
Core Asset Features in a product, works on
the platform
Design Consumer
Value Creation Charge for function feature based
on customer needs
Cost Consumer pays for what he buys
Revenue stream Single stream from selling the
product
Business Drivers Enterprise and consumers
Platform
Core Asset Ecosystem
Design Producers & Consumer, partners
Value Creation Interactions between consumers
and third parties
Cost It depends
Revenue stream Multiple
Business Drivers Partners & Consumers
Source : https://www.mindtree.com/blog/everything-you-need-know-about-platform-product-management

26. Architecting Platform as a Business
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Challenges to be Addressed
1. How to build a platform that invites participations and creates value for all its
participants? – “Chicken and Egg” problem in network effects.
2. What tools and services should it provide that make it easy for producers and
consumers to interact in mutually rewarding ways? (think “frictionless”
transactions and data intelligence)
3. How do we design a technological infrastructure that can scale rapidly, and
encourages positive network effects while minimizing negative ones?
4. Exporting Network Effect?
Learn More: Architecting Platforms as a Business
https://www.iss.nus.edu.sg/executive-education/course/detail/architecting--platforms-as-a-business/digital-products-platforms

27. Summary
1. Product Thinking Mindset
Product-centric business model and product-centric
culture.
3. Platform Evolution Ensure a more sustainable and resilience business model
Product Management © Copyright National University of Singapore. All Rights Reserved 27