Intentional growth: A playbook for digital differentiation
Part 1:
Arrested evolution
Analyzing common pitfalls in product innovation.
Beware the 3 innovation pitfalls
When you have a great product in a crowded field, how do you know where to innovate? Great companies often make simple mistakes: adding too much to their product, copying their competitors without a clear reason why, and leaving users behind. By the time you’ve realized you’ve fallen behind, a new entrant has built something novel that better aligns with your customers underlying needs.
Of the dozens of client’s I’ve supported through digital transformation, there are three pitfalls I’ve seen even the most ambitious companies fall for:
01 Aimless featuring
After bringing a fantastic, innovative product to market, an initial market leader loses steam, and begins to duplicate features unscrupulously, creating a bloated, directionless product.
LinkedIn: A mission lost among the clutter
LinkedIn has spent the last decade growing their platform from a digital rolodex to an expansive connection hub. I wouldn’t be in my current position without LinkedIn. But much of their more recent product refinement seems laser focused on boosting ad revenue, to the detriment of a valuable and cohesive user experience. They’ve riffed off Facebook, TikTok, and even the New York Times with reels, feeds, news, posts, and puzzles, all while some job-seeking and hiring features are beginning to feel outdated. LinkedIn is a valuable platform, but a heightened focus on engagement metrics to the benefit of advertisers may risk alienating end-users, providing space for a competitor to offer a simpler, more intuitive, and more meaningful experience.
Aimless featuring driven by engagement metrics can degrade the value of a platform for end-users, risking disruption from a competitor that prioritizes a more unified, purpose-driven experience..
02 Unconvincing cloning
A competitor launches something amazing. You want in, so you copy what they did to a T, but fail to execute to as high a standard. Without offering anything convincing, few customers switch to your ecosystem. Even worse, you end up alienating the customers that love your product for what it is.
Microsoft Zune: too similar to iPod to stand out
Faced with the iPod’s popularity, Microsoft sought to offer an alternative with the introduction of the Zune in 2006. While it did everything iPod could, Zune was actually quite advanced, introducing new features like TV connectivity, and a version of audio streaming. But many users found Zune’s interface clunky and housing bulkier and flimsier in comparison to iPod. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Zune’s hero features misaligned with music lovers desires for a portable audio experience; few users switched to Zune. It’s difficult entering a market dominated by a successful product, but clunky replica that doesn’t center your own brands strengths is unlikely to win many admirers. Perhaps a more ‘open-source’ approach to the Zune marketplace could have attracted users from iTunes guarded towers while centering Microsoft’s tech-passionate fans and developers.
Ground innovation in genuine customer needs. If a competitors product is successful, know exactly why. Avoid alienating your fans to emulate a service that misaligns with your own brand promise.
03 Confident stagnating
Others simply fail to innovate beyond an initial hero feature, and become quickly irrelevant as new challengers emerge with a better experience and more cohesive and meaningful value proposition.
Blackberry: Blind to their own gaps
Blackberry was too wed to their technology. Keyboards and styluses have serious limitations. While iPhone couldn’t match blackberry with certain functions initially, the joy and simplicity of a larger, interactive screen made for a more flexible platform. iPhone could evolve quicker than Blackberry, and with the App Store, could adapt to new ideas and interactions instantly.
Overconfidence in your offering may blind you to your weaknesses. Proactively identify user needs you fail to meet and design more valuable experiences that make your current product irrelevant. Fortune favors the intentional risk-takers; a “We’ll be fine” attitude yields stagnation.
Even the best and the brightest get stuck
Getting trapped in an experience pitfall leads to what I call a “stuck product”, a service that was once a market leader but quickly “innovated” or ignored their way to the precipice.
If doing nothing risks stagnating, and frantically cloning uninspired ideas causes bloat, how do you successfully build upon an established product? Enduring market leaders ceaselessly focus on 4 avenues for differentiation: Amplify your hero, Nail the table stakes, Outclass a core differentiator, Chart new waters.