Everyday Reflections

A few weeks back I wrote a blog post on how you can bring technology and growth more close to realization by adopting 5S Tech Strategy The blog post talked about taking a 5S approach towards product development that could help create a more robust & user centric product. I am extending my thinking now at strategic level to make an attempt at addressing the problem we face today :- How to counter the rapid change happening around us.

In so many years , the only thing I would ever speculate would be about an outcome of a cricket match or weather in cities I would have visited , but that still came with certain level of confidence; Today policies , businesses & impact on people has gotten reduced to a level of speculation never seen before! Feedback loop that drives future has shortened and is demanding faster reaction time.

In this blog , I will talk about the F(lexible) A(daptable) S(wift) T(ransformational) approach to Product Strategy. Each of the four pillars have been described by taking examples that are recent and defining in how they are impacting lives & society.

Flexible

Pandemic has shown us that flexibility is a key attribute that any design will have to cater for future. If we do not carry that trait our ability to respond will be constricted.

Health & fitness as a product is currently driving the Indian urban market. People now are willing to spend a good amount of their disposable income towards gyms, health devices like Fitbit and many more. The running events or rather the Marathon events are slowly gaining popularity in India, especially in Metros. Number of professional runners in India who train themselves through out the year to participate in Marathons is increasing by triple digit figures year on year.

But due to pandemic this activity has been drastically , where the whole joy of running in groups , meeting up and combining social activity with physical sport has gone for a toss. So should they stop organizing events ?

The obvious answer is NO , most of these event management firms have shifted to a virtual format where-in they are still able to charge 50% of registration fee than a normal event and provided for a simple mechanism to upload results post your run. They are trying to be flexible about where you run , when you run and how you measure performance.

Key Take Away : The product should be Flexible enough to continue to cater to its addressable market and foster engagement with its user base

Adaptable

In late March , Belgium gave the go-ahead to breweries, distilleries and other recognized alcohol-makers to exceptionally produce disinfecting hand gel as demand surges due to the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.

The Rubbens Distillery was one of the first businesses to cater to a new pandemic-related niche — making hand sanitizer in addition to gin. The pandemic has forced many European businesses to improvise. This Belgian gin distillery now has a popular line in hand sanitizer!

More examples across Europe reflect upon how the crisis forced thousands of companies to adapt — either to stay afloat, or to cater to a new pandemic-related niche. In France, perfumeries made disinfectant. In Denmark, a gourmet restaurant now sells only burgers. Elsewhere in this Belgian town, a lingerie manufacturer pivoted from corsets to COVID, and now produces face masks.

Key Take Away : The product / solution should be Adaptable to serve unrelated needs emanating from its customer base.

Swift

Swiftness to respond , is a great attribute to have. We often see inflexibility that comes when using different technology stacks and it becomes difficult for engineering teams to respond swiftly to changing market dynamics and retain market share. If you look at the new wave of platform hypothesis you would come across the following terms more often than ever :

Microservices based, API-first, Cloud-native SaaS and Headless.

It is agile and nimble, always up to date approach that can help provide swiftness to your solution if the underlying platform is able to support the above tenets.

Whilst above is an example from how digital needs to transform and respond to changing business strategy. The following example is from manufacturing where 3D-printing platform have countered supply chain disruptions enabling on demand solutions for needs ranging from personal protection equipment to medical devices and isolation wards. the digital versatility and quick prototyping of 3D-printing has enabled the rapid mobilization of the technology and a swift response to emergencies in a closed loop economy.

An Italian engineering company, Isinnova, came up with a 3D printable respirator parts for free to help keep coronavirus patients alive , called a venturi valve, it connects to a patient’s face mask to deliver oxygen at a fixed concentration. The valves need to be replaced for each patient. The biggest supply crunch is with ventilators, but respirator parts like the ones in Italy and even simple nasopharyngeal swabs for testing are all in short supply. Meanwhile, the technology of 3D printing, which allows digital design of parts and the “printing” of them off a machine that creates them layer by layer, is ideally suited to emergency manufacturing because it is fast, cheap and can be done without a big factory

Key Take Away : The platform / solution should be enabled to provide Swift response to the challenges that are thrown by macro factors governing the market.

Transformational

With above tenets in design , the product offering needs to be truly transformational to disrupt the market. May 26th was historic day in spaceflight era. It was a start of new journey. For the first time ever on this day , SpaceX launched a crewed mission to the International Space Station . NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Douglas Hurley took this journey on Crew Dragon spacecraft and shepherded it into a new era of space exploration.

At $1.7 billion dollars, SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicle is the least expensive spacecraft developed since the Mercury Program, which, adjusted for inflation, cost the agency $2.7 billion!

Another fun fact is that the astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley drove to the launchpad in an electric car manufactured by Tesla, another of Musk’s pioneering companies, foregoing the “tin-can” Astrovan that has been the traditional crew transport since the US began sending humans into space in 1961 🙂 .

Self driving cars and reusable space rockets , we would have never imagined to move out from prototypes to production systems , but that is a reality now and maturing everyday!

Key Take Away : For a product to truly disrupt the market it has to be Transformational unless that happens competition will catch on and take over.