Product Strategy - What is it?
Recently, there has been a couple of articles on product strategy coming up through Substack.
Without doing a survey or deep-down into what everyone else has written, I wanted to first start with my base understanding, and from there review how other people think about it to update my own thinking.
My lens to product strategy is to empower individuals to view themselves as a "product" with a strategy. There will be limitations since humans are "products," but perhaps the rigor typically used for products can and should be applied to sovereign humans.
Who would have thought that humans can't just "live" but, instead, must be strategic about their life choices?
I certainly didn't; and in retrospect, realize that could have been very valuable.
I'm going to start first with how to apply it and use it in the context of products and businesses (which is vast and entire industries have grown around it); but really focus on early stage companies.
Why care about strategy?
Most would say that execution is far more important than strategy, and this would be right if this is a binary choice: one either executes or is strategic.
So for sure, doing something that hasn't been well-thought out is going to be better than doing nothing that is. And as long as one has some feedback loop and awareness of a general direction (which isn't always true for businesses), execution > strategy.
After all, you can't steer a parked car.
But I would argue that this is a false choice.
That, in reality, even those who are just executing really do have a strategy -- the absence of one.
And strategy without execution doesn't really apply to start-ups, but is common-place in large companies that hire McKinsey, Bain, and BCG (often those strategies are heavily invested in, but are not executed).
In software, where tools enable faster development and more automated marketing, pure execution, alone, may not be enough to stand out.
Copy cats, for example, can fast-follow in short time and greater numbers.
In web3, open and composable stacks mean traditional moats of closed-source software become less formidable.
While the saying "skate where the puck is going" has been overused and misapplied, some truth lies within: businesses still need to anticipate the rate and slope of change.
If using a surfing analogy: the waves come more frequently, with a shorter horizon.
So I would say that strategy gives one the ability to be more agile and intentional in execution.
What would be a definition of product strategy?
It's a way for a company to act in the face of ambiguity that builds an advantage.
There are three elements in this (v1) version of product strategy:
- ambiguity
- act
- advantage
The first reason for the need of a product strategy is the Ambiguity of markets, customers, and competitors.
If things were clear what needed to be done, unlimited resources, and accurate foresight into how other players would respond, there would not need to be a strategy. Pure execution: do what customers say, fix problems, be tactical and push push push.
But if the world is ambiguous, there does need to be a strategy -- even if that strategy includes a plan to learn what is necessary to reduce ambiguity.
The second part of a product strategy is Act.
As indicated above, a start-up or early-stage company with a strategy but no execution is non-existent; someone with skills only in strategy but no action is a consultant (and these may be fewer and fewer).