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By brantcooper, December 8, 2009 10:10 pm

For some reason, I’ve always wanted to try and put Steve Blank’s Customer Development, Eric Ries’ Lean Startup and Dave McClure’s AARRR[G] in one slide.  Here’s what I’ve come up with:

Is this at all helpful? Let me know if you have any suggestions or comments.

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By brantcooper, December 7, 2009 1:46 pm

In Andrew Chen’s recent post, “Does every startup need a Steve Jobs?”, he discusses IDEO’s “product framework for Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability.”  Chen’s descriptions of business-, engineering-, and design-focused product perspectives reminded me of the work on companies’ “driving force” popularized by Michel Robert in his series of business strategy books.  Understanding your “driving force” is critical to understanding what products to build and who to build them for.  The driving force helps shape technology choices, importance of design, market segment, and business model as well as company culture, growth plan and exit strategy.

The basic point, is that while all companies employ technology, sell products or services, employ technology, market to specific segments and use certain distribution methods, one factor dominates (or should dominate) the others in terms of business strategy.

one component of the business is the driving force of the strategy — the company’s so-called DNA.  This driving force, in turn, greatly determines the array of products, customers, industry segments, and geographic markets that management chooses to emphasize more or emphasize less

Here is a subset of  driving forces Robert discusses:

Product

Company pursues a strategy based on a single product and its off-shoots.  All future products are some derivative of the core product.  Examples include Coca-Cola, most automobile manufacturers, Zappos.

Market Type and User Class

Company identifies a specific marketplace to target.   American Hospital Supply supplies hospitals with whatever they need.  User Class refers to a specific set of users.  Johnson & Johnson, for example, makes hundreds of highly differentiated products that serve doctors, nurses and patients.  Cisco’s driving force is building products for network professionals.

Technology

Company looks for opportunities to apply its technology.  Dupont, 3M, and Intel are good examples.

Means of Production

Profits determined primarily by availability (uptime) of its differentiated or highly-efficient production capabilities.  Examples include Steel, Oil refineries, printing.

Sales or Marketing

Company’s method of sales or marketing is unique or stands out compared to others who sell similar products.  For example, catalog companies, door-to-door, MLM, Amazon.

Distribution

Company has unique or differentiated method of moving products.  New products will follow same distribution.  Examples include FedEx, Warehouse stores, phone companies.

Natural Resources

Company’s purpose is to extract and productize oil, timber, etc.  Examples: oil and mining companies.

A company’s driving force may change over time, but usually as a “pivot.”  In other words, if the company runs out of growth opportunities or faces extinction, changing the driving force may be necessary.  Though companies have one driving force, other forces still come into play.  The one driving force, however, determines the strategic decisions.  Having multiple driving forces causes a lack of focus and confuses product choices and marketing plans.

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With respect to Chen’s descriptions then, a “Business-focused product perspective” might be a Product driven company; an “Engineering-focused product perspective” might be a Technology-driven company; and a “Design-focused product perspective” might be a User Class-driven company. Presuming for a moment that all of these businesses want to make some amount of money, looking at the company’s strategic driving force can perhaps help focus the best product perspective for that particular business. The “encroachment” of business or engineering on design is (theoretically) dependent on the driving force, rather than personal bias.

With respect to “Minimum x Product,” where x = “Viable” or “Desirable” or whatever else, x should be dependent on (1) your “objective” and (2) your driving force.   In other words, if you’re objective is to determine whether prospects will pay for a product, you need to build enough product in such a way that your potential customer will buy. If your driving force is a User Type that demands a certain level of usability and aesthetics, your product must minimally reach that level to test your objective.

Comments (1)

By brantcooper, December 1, 2009 3:15 am

And now for something completely different. Lessee if I can earn some techy bone fides.

Like many blogs, my sidebar is filled with blog-related functionality, e.g., search box, RSS, feed, blog navigational tools, etc., that isn’t particularly relevant to my static pages. So I wanted to use a different sidebar for the static pages.   If you look at my sidebar on this page, it includes typical blog sidebar stuff.  But if you go to the  “Marketing Help” page, you’ll see a completely different sidebar!

Easy enough, I suppose, for WordPress experts and easy enough to ascertain, for the technically-gifted. It took me a little while, however, to navigate through the steps and so I thought I would share. Again, I am no expert, so I can’t say for sure I’ve done it the best way or the “right” way, but it works for me and I think these steps are pretty easy. This assumes, by the way, that you are hosting WordPress yourself. These instructions might also vary by WordPress version and by theme.

So here goes:
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