Week 8 Research methods

Product Manager

-“A product manager is the person who identifies the customer need and the larger business objectives that a product or feature will fulfil, articulates what success looks like for a product, and rallies a team to turn that vision into a reality. ” (Atlassian Web Site)

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3 out of 4 products that hit the ground have no customers (Osterwalder 2010)

Many firms are building products / services that no-one wants or needs

A lot of companies are very bad at innovation (Google, google glasses/ a lot of failures for their 5 successors)

-Google maps

-Google search

-Android

-Chrome

-Cloud

Innovation is hard 

Meta - Portal, FB Platform, Metaverse (failing or in demise)

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All innovations need to be fully met with features that users are already familiar with (new phone must have basic features as well as your innovative features) What would be a must have to include in this next model

Over time the Wow factor of a product have fall off as people get used to them innovation (Phones touchscreen, camera quality)

A product can reach its peak (Porche from 1982 to the present day, same design / Phones seem to have reached a technological peak)

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Company products that got this wrong

Quibi

-Founded in 2020

-Short form videos on mobile (subscriptions)

-Burned through 2 bil in one year

-People preferred TikTok cause it was free and included user created content rather than professional consent 

Theranos

-Founded in 2003 by Elizabeth Holmes 

-Idea: Revolutionary way to sample blood

-fraudulent 

Block buster

-Founded 37 years ago 

-DVD, games rental store 

-Sent via mail

-Beaten out of the market by Netflix 

Netflix S-curve 

Kodak

-Founded in 1892

-Chapter 11: 2012 after 130 years 

-Industry leaders in photography film

-Disrupted by digital photography (which they invented)

-Issues: management were too slow to adopt to new technology

Successful innovators 

-Amazon; Apple; Microsoft; Tesla

-Cannibalise their business models repeatedly and continuously to stay ahead 

-Re-invent and work across various industries - they are industry agnostics

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Research 

Find problems in the market 

Value = cheaper, quicker

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JTBD Case study 

-1950s NASA commissioned pens to be able to write in space 

-1 million dollars on developing the 'Fisher space pen' 

-The pen can write upside done, in water, and zero gravity

-The Russian cosmonauts just used a pencil 

-Question: What was the underlying 'job to be done'

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A core principle of new product development is empirical research 

Which means understanding something with your own eyes and ears (witness the problem first hand)

Understanding problems and users and thinking about the solutions 

Empathy 

-Understanding end users of a new product really means empathising with them 

-talking to them and finding out the problems and issues that could effect them

Focus Groups 

Focus groups allow developers to talk to groups and understand sentiment about a product or service 

Pros: Gather info quickly about sentiment; deeper dive into conversations around problems or issue's

Cons: Group think and influence of ideas in a group 

Individual interviews 

When you find people representative of your ideal customers, you can talk to them about individual situations 

This will allow you to build empathy more easily 

Pros: Conversations allow you to understand phenomena easily 

Cons: one persons opinion; could be misleading if this is the wrong person 

Questionnaire

Great way to understand opinion from samples of people 

Are a lot more difficult than they appear 

Pros: Can be mediated across the internet – remotely. Very efficient. 

Cons: Where questions are not clear, they can be misleading or subject to scrutiny (bias issues)