3Product Design
3.1. Where is the gap?
You said product? Who designs products? Designers and developers, of course. And they are good at it, since they do it all the time. So, why bother?
3.1.1. Business school
Product design: it is an engineering discipline, out of the scope of a good manager.
Product definition: the marketing defines the products to be developed, the technical teams execute this vision.
Period. And then...
About your catalog: your product catalog will obey the 80-20 rule. Accept this by balancing your earnings.
On packing with functionality: as competition shrinks your market share, add value with more functionality.
3.1.2. Apple
Products must be “insanely great”, which implies a number of choices, not all technical in the usual sense, including form and function. Extreme care is taken to any of them, whether resulting in a visible result or not. Design is iterated on as many prototypes as needed to feel convinced at the end that the best choices have been made, irrespective of costs and delays. The top-level manager is involved and committed in this process. There is no place for “good enough” products.
To heck with the 80-20 rule. Get rid of the useless part. Almost everything should be essential. The 80-20 rationale view is a common tolerance view on lesser quality. You do not educate markets. You stay in the midst of other’s complacencies. An 80-80 ...
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