⛑ 3 Fatal Mistakes to Avoid in Product Management
Blindspots; the Moses Trap; what PARC got wrong; plus, special offer for our readers
In the world of technology, it’s easy to get caught up in the excitement of turning your innovative ideas into actual products or features. However, it’s important to be aware of common pitfalls that can trip you up along the way. If you’re not careful, you can easily fall into common traps that can ultimately prove fatal for your tech venture. In this article, we’ll explore three fatal mistakes that you’ll want to avoid when turning your idea into a reality. By understanding these mistakes and how to avoid them, you can increase your chances of success and bring your product or feature to market successfully.
👁🗨 Blindspots
It’s easy for proponents of product loonshots — bold, ambitious ideas — to focus on only the newest, biggest, best products or technological innovations and thereby become blind to the clever strategies that allow seemingly lesser competitors to outdo them.
So, how should you avoid blindspots and maintain a broad perspective?
Seek out diverse perspectives: Make an effort to seek out and consider perspectives that differ from your own. This can help to expose you to new ideas and approaches that you might not have considered otherwise.
Encourage open communication: Create an environment where people feel comfortable voicing their opinions and ideas, even if they differ from the dominant perspective.
Practice active listening: When others are speaking, make an effort to truly understand their perspective and consider their ideas, rather than just waiting for your turn to speak.
Take breaks and step back: It can be helpful to take regular breaks and step back from your work to gain a fresh perspective.
Reflect on your own biases: We all have biases, and it’s important to be aware of them and try to overcome them. Take the time to reflect on your own biases and how they might be affecting your perspective.
🌊 The Moses Trap
A company can run into trouble when it’s led by a strong visionary who dictates the exact course of innovation, like the biblical figure Moses, since they lead their organizations through sheer force of will and vision. In cases like this, the company is able to separate innovators and implementers but often fails to foster dynamic idea exchange between them. As a result, the company gets so enamored with its technology that it fails to plan how that innovation will be implemented.
Think about Edwin Land, who was the cofounder and CEO of Polaroid. He loved film technology and kept Polaroid focused exclusively on developing new film cameras even when the digital cameras entered the market. Unfortunately for Polaroid, the newer technologies were cheaper and more convenient for users, so Polaroid lost the majority of its market share.
Are you falling into the Moses Trap? Try incorporating the following strategies into your leadership style:
Establish processes for evaluating and incorporating new ideas: Make sure that new ideas are given fair consideration, rather than being automatically dismissed.
Build a diverse team or advisory group: A diverse group can provide a range of perspectives and help to ensure that all ideas are given due consideration.
Be open to change: Be willing to consider new approaches and to adapt to changing circumstances. Don’t be too attached to your own — be open to the possibility that there may be better options out there.
🏞 The PARC Trap
If an organization achieves separation of innovators and implementers but fails to foster dynamic exchange between them, loonshots often get kept so separate that the innovative ideas never make it to implementation and instead die in the lab.
The “PARC trap” — named after the R&D company once owned by Xerox — is a term that has been used to describe the tendency of companies to become too focused on their own research and development and ignore the needs and wants of their customers. By becoming too focused on its own research, a company may miss out on important market trends or customer feedback, which can ultimately lead to the failure of its products or services. To avoid falling into the PARC trap, it’s important for tech companies to stay attuned to the needs and wants of their customers, and to be willing to pivot and adapt their products or services as needed.
This is exactly what happened at Xerox’s PARC research and development lab. PARC developed a whole host of innovations that Xerox never brought to the market; these innovations went on to shape modern computing, but Xerox couldn’t capture the value they created.
A few additional strategies that you can use to avoid falling into the PARC trap:
Stay connected to your customers: Make sure you are actively gathering customer feedback and using it to inform your product development decisions.
Collaborate with external partners: Look for opportunities to work with other companies, research institutions, or other external partners who can bring new perspectives and insights to your product development process.
Keep an eye on industry trends and market changes: Stay up-to-date on industry trends and market changes, and be willing to pivot and adapt your products or services as needed.
These are just a few of the traps you could fall into especially if you’re working to launch your loonshot idea into a product. Safi Bahcall, the author of the book Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries, agrees that innovations as wide-ranging and world-changing as radar, insulin, and computer animation all share a similar trajectory — they all began as flawed and incredibly fragile ideas. In her book, she elaborates on how to encourage and nurture such loonshot ideas.
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