It probably seems obvious, stating that companies should listen to their customers and that they need to be evidence-driven when executing their product strategy. But I've found that it's much easier to say than to execute in practice.

There are a number of reasons for this, but in my experience I've found that the largest barriers are organizational structure, budget constraints, and cultural inertia. It's difficult for any of us to admit we may not be right about something. But being open-minded enough to admit when we're wrong and having the willingness and flexibility to adjust course accordingly is critical to cultivating a successful product strategy.

I enjoy pulling together expertise and insight from across the different functional areas of organizations to have collaborative, cross-functional conversations to drive product strategy. I'm a big believer in the value of people offering crazy ideas and asking dumb questions as both can uncover different ways of thinking and new approaches.

And it's important that those cross-functional conversations are infused with evidence drawn from customer insights. Some of that will be quantitative data, yes. But a lot of value is derived from qualitative information as well.

A former colleague of mine from my tenure at Pearson introduced me to Value Proposition Design as framed by the smart folks at Strategyzer right around the same time that the company was undergoing a massive initiative to reframe the way they approached product life cycle (PLC) decisions. Pearson’s new PLC process was, in principle, very much aligned to the approach articulated by Strategyzer.

If you are looking to refine an approach to product innovation and design that’s informed by customer needs, I encourage you to give it a look.