Strategic Insights

Summary

1. Articulates strategy on why and how an opportunity should be pursued

2. Considers roles of competitors, partners, and regulators

3. Identifies related technologies, trends, and standards

4. Sets and drives a long term business strategy across product & service elements

5. Connects short-term and long-term product strategy and roadmap in complex and fast moving industries

Attributes

1. Articulates strategy on why and how an opportunity should be pursued

References

• Understanding general strategic principles
  • Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology.
  • An introduction to Aggregation Theory | by Fredrik Haga | Medium
  • Mintzberg - Crafting Strategy.pdf
• Strategy frameworks
  • “How to build a strategy in an agile environment” talk for The Product School
  • Have you tested your strategy lately?
  • https://medium.com/@shreyashere/good-product-strategy-bad-product-strategy-826cdfe74818
  • Rocking at Product Strategy: 3 steps and 10 tools to succeed where most companies fail

2. Considers roles of competitors, partners, and regulators

References

• Understanding the value chain: https://sean.horgan.net/d/_d3H4GIs7zuo/_suCg080x
• Understanding competitors
  • Comparative Research Done Right
  • Steve Blank A New Way to Look at Competitors
  • Why the Petal Diagram Isn’t the Best Competition Diagram for Startup’s Pitch by @ttunguz
  • The right way to challenge your competitors | Inside Intercom
  • How Competitive Forces Shape Strategy
  • Making Sense of Technological Ecosystems

3. Identifies related technologies, trends, and standards

References

• Innovation
  • The idea maze - cdixon _ The idea maze.pdf
• Improve Your Product Team’s Combat Effectiveness (Part 1) | by Eric H. Kim | Practice Product
• A Taxonomy of Moats | Reaction Wheel - A Taxonomy of Moats _ Reaction Wheel.pdf
• (notes on) 7 Powers: Foundations of Business by Hamilton Helmer
• How Strategy Shapes Structure
• The 5 Disqualifiers of Strategy
• Accepts Roy Amara‘s law: “We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.”

4. Sets and drives a long term business strategy across product & service elements

References

• Strategy processes - how to get the organization aligned on strategy
  • The Secret to a Great Planning Process — Lessons from Airbnb and Eventbrite
  • #10 How to Run A Quarterly Product Strategy Meeting | by Gibson Biddle | Medium
  • Template: Company Strategy
  • https://sean.horgan.net/d/_d3H4GIs7zuo/_suIevs8G#_lud3Shr-
  • Innovation Resources

5. Connects short-term and long-term product strategy

Note: I’m rewriting this at the moment

From Andy Grove’s High Output Management (Chapter 6):

Manage short-term objectives based on long-term plans. Be thoughtful about long term plans: 1) size your market, 2) know where you are, 3) find a hypothetical path to meet demand. Move towards long term plans using short-term Objectives (sub-goals) and corresponding Key Results (clear, unambiguous milestones to pace progress).

Simple frameworks like McKinsey’s Three Horizons look nice when presented on a slide but they often hide more than they reveal. Having said that, it’s worth learning it as you’ll see it pop up so here’s a quick overview on the basics:

1. Horizon 1 ideas provide continuous innovation to a company’s existing business model and core capabilities in the short-term.
2. Horizon 2 ideas extend a company’s existing business model and core capabilities to new customers, markets, or targets.
3. Horizon 3 is the creation of new capabilities and new business to take advantage of or respond to disruptive opportunities or to counter disruption.

Steve Blank wrote the following in this HBR article:

However, the trap of the Three Horizon model is not recognizing that today many disruptions can be rapidly implemented by repurposing existing Horizon 1 technologies into new business models — and that speed of deployment is disruptive and asymmetric by itself.

References

• McKinsey’s Three Horizons Model Defined Innovation for Years. Here’s Why It No Longer Applies.

Strategy Frameworks

More senior PMs should be very familiar with common strategic theories and easily separate useful frames from buzzword bingo. I’ve laid some here in https://sean.horgan.net/d/_d3H4GIs7zuo/_su0hQ-cZ#_lugwHZYt but these are pretty well tuned to my experiences in tech.

Books

If I had to recommend one book on strategy, it would be Richard Rumelt’s Good Strategy/Bad Strategy. I’ve included a few links to summaries below along with a few other must reads:

• Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters - Richard Rumelt
  • Notes from “Good Strategy / Bad Strategy” by Jeff Zych
  • https://youexec.com/book-summaries/good-strategy-bad-strategy#.
  • https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/58895961-the-crux
  • Good Strategy, Bad Strategy | Richard Rumelt
• What is Strategy? - Porter
• FT Guide to Strategy: How to Create and Deliver a Winning Strategy by Richard Koch - comprehensive index of common strategic frameworks with great references to deeper reading
• Strategy: Create and Implement the Best Strategy for Your Business
• The Art of Action by Stephen Bungay
• The Alchemy of Growth by Mehrdad Baghai and others

Quotes

“Good strategy is coherent action backed up by an argument, an effective mixture of thought and action with a basic underlying structure I call the kernel.”

• Richard Rumelt Good Strategy Bad Strategy: the difference and why it matters

From Shreyas Doshi: Most execution problems are really

• 1. Strategy problems, or
• 2. Interpersonal problems (individuals) or
• 3. Culture problems. (difference between stated values and accepted behavior)

From Think like a farmer