Product is very important in every business. It can be in tangible form such as engineering tools, medical devices, electrical washing machine, hybrid car, solar power panel, cost effective airline and so on. Additionally, product also can come in intangible form such as services. In one article I read from MIT Sloan Management Review months ago, they suggested the new economy is mostly focusing on how to “servicizing” your existing tangible product. In other words, from this servicizing you can create additional services around your product.

For example you run a paint company. Traditionally you have just selling paint and distribute some paint related tools. Servicizing proposed you provide “paint mixing services” where your expertise and knowledge in paint colors can help (with the help of mixer and other color mixing technology) your customers to have customized paint for their house. Another example, for customers that buy large quantity, you provide delivery service and painter service; of course at additional charge. The focus still the customers and providing exceptional services but because it is value added it is justifiable to charge a fee.

You may have heard other theories of product creation, product management, product lifecycle, product portfolio management, product marketing and so on. But, without solid understanding on how to make or create product, it will very difficult for you to do anything about the rest. It is impossible to do product management study without having any product to study. 🙂 

But, often times in many organizations they have product development department. It can be inside the R&D department or marketing department. Interestingly, lately I observed some of my clients product development team is reporting under CEO’s and MD’s office. In other words, the top leader has direct interaction with them. Reason why? When it is “hidden” under other department, product development and new product launch become very slow. That’s what they tell me. What do you think?

For those who can afford a product development team and R&D engineers, well, they certainly no small players. They have the money to maintain these teams and certainly their market potentials are millions dollars. My advice to them, don’t wait too long and at the same time don’t spend too much. Be rigorous when pursuing new product launch and set numerical target either in number of patents and expected sales or revenue generation. Chop them off when they don’t perform but pay a lot of attention to them when they perform and during economic crisis.

What? Why you need to pay extra attention during economic crisis? Because customers are looking for alternative and most businesses retreated to basic. Do you see what I see? Yes, the market becomes less competitive and customers are paying 150% attention because they are seeking for alternative solutions. And they will not stop until they find it. Crisis after all not that bad huh?

You can look at my product development idea below, who knows it can trigger some other ideas. Grab it. If you find it boring, I already warned you, “I told you so!”. 🙂

For this article, I am more interested with the small medium enterprises (SME) or entrepreneurs that actually the product by themselves (they personally provide consulting, project management, advisory and coaching services; among others) and entrepreneurs that probably have tangible products to sell such as engineering device waiting for commercialization, biotechnology start-ups, IT system start-ups, franchise start-ups and other start-ups. For those who is licensing or franchising products from someone else, hey you are not supposed to change anything else you are violating the contract! Haha!

Well, let’s get started. In this article I will only cover the conceptual idea about How to Create Successful Product. I will post seperate article to explain each steps within a week. I am still finalizing the draft.

There are 5 Main Steps in creating successful new product. It can be new invention, upgrade, modification, facelift and innovation. I called it “BE DAMN”! Wait a sec, I am serious it sounds like that. If you don’t follow these steps in your product development, you are “BE DAMN”ed.

BASIC, INNOVATION, DUPLICATE, MARKETING AND MANAGEMENT– BIDMM (BE DAMN!)

Check out the diagram below:

 

I will explain these 5 steps (BIDMM) in my next post.

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