January 2004
Product Design to Market Leadership
Speaker: John Addison, OPTIMARK Inc.

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John Addison presented at the January 7th meeting of the SVPMA on Product Design to Market Leadership. John presented a framework on assessing where a product falls in the technology adoption lifecycle and what actions should be taken in marketing and development of that product to accelerate time to market, adoption, and success. John developed his strategies as one of the early architects of Sun Microsystems successful channel program and later as president of OPTIMARK, a leading consulting firm focused on sales channel strategy and partner development. John is the author of the recently published book Revenue Rocket (reviewed in this issue of the newsletter).

John discussed the myriad of product development challenges, from achieving faster time to market to dealing with changing requirements and product drift. The most important step you can take to navigate through these obstacles in involving the “right” customer. John then introduced the Technology Adoption Lifecycle (TALC) model that Geoffrey Moore made famous in Crossing the Chasm. This model divides the market into innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards. John then built upon this by tying the product strategies to the stages of the lifecycle, because you have to know where you are in the TALC to know which customers with whom you should be working.

Four market strategies and product goals can be mapped to the TALC. Disruptive technology requires a functional product that is first to market to gain a foothold with innovators and early adopters. A leapfrog strategy needs successful customer deployments to drive adoption of early majority customers. As the strategy shift to achieving market dominance of the early majority segment, the product goals shift to gaining market share, revenue, and quality. Finally, brand extensions target the late majority with a focus on product profitability.

When developing a disruptive technology, you should involve a visionary customer to provide prototype feedback. When producing a leapfrog product, you want to work with a segment leader to identify what is required to meet 100% of their needs. John adds that this is where start-ups often founder; they put off building the 100% solution in pursuit of short term revenue gains. If you are working to build the product that will allow to you to dominate the market, you want to work with infrastructure buyers and conduct quantitative research to understand the space and the value your product returns.

Lastly, if you are developing brand extensions, you must involve segment users to understand and meet the needs of each niche. Lastly, as you move through the lifecycle, sales strategies will also progress. It might start direct and then include strategic partners, specialty VARS who can assemble the 100% solution, oem, distributors, etc. If you are a larger company, you will have a portfolio of products that cover all phases of the TALC. It is important to match the product, marketing, and sales strategies to the goals for the different lifecycle stages.

To learn more about future workshops by John Addison, go to http://www.optimarkworks.com/workshops