Product Strategy for High Technology Companies [Hardcover]

That said, speaking as a five-time startup engineer, the advice
and examples in this book seem geared towards the core product
lines in larger companies, where you can credibly talk about
"two years from now" as opposed to wondering if you'll even be
in business, which is also the problem for new product lines at
large companies. The experience for the book comes from the
PRTM consulting firm, which was made famous for their work with
parallel product development at Intel. We hired them in the
early days at Inktomi, and found mixed success with their
process because we were terrified of immediate failure, and
they wanted to talk about version 3. Obviously, there's a
successful middle ground because Inktomi was a huge success in
the short term, but ultimately lost its strategic direction.

However, he may forget to remind readers that these require cost before enjoying the benefits, such as you need to hire a new tier of middle management if you company is too small to afford before; to establish the new channel capabilities to justify the investment on the platform bcz to access new markets; the IT system to calculate operation efficiencies such as engineering head count, material cost, and supply chain cost is also not cheap if you only have the option to use turn-key solution.....

It may be reasonable to equip product platform strategy only when benefits are greater than costs.

Core strategic vision, strategic balance, core competencies, and competitive strategy are together the foundations on which the often-ignored product platform strategy is built. Product platform strategy is the lowest common denominator of relevant technology in a set of products or a product line. Product failures in high-tech companies frequently can be traced to an incomplete product platform strategy according to McGrath. Strategic balance, product platform strategy, and competitive strategy are together the foundations of product line strategy. Product line strategy is where specific product offerings are defined.

Core strategic vision also influences the competitive strategy that high technology companies must define. McGrath provides an in-depth, practical review of differentiation strategy, pricing strategy, and supporting strategies. Supporting strategies are first-to-market and fast-follower strategies, cannibalization, and global product strategy. McGrath's examination of both time-based strategies and cannibalization is particularly interesting because both subjects are rarely covered in such a luxury of detail. McGrath finally examines the optional expansion strategy and innovation strategy. High technology companies only need them if they want to invest in expansion or innovation.

To summarize, Product Strategy for High Technology Companies is a practical guide to a management process from which even product managers from outside the high tech industry can draw useful lessons and more importantly apply them to their own product strategy.