How to avoid developing products that become obsolete

Imagine your product team is an ancient desert tribe. The tribe is busy building 'Plusbow' - the next generation of bow and arrow. The team thinks hard about what local warriors need, how the new technology works and how they will structure trade deals.

Suddenly a merchant caravan arrives, offering strange-looking silver tubes which fire accurate, deadly projectiles. Warriors flock to the new merchants in droves. No-one wants to buy the Plusbow. The venture is dead.

I’ve made this story up, but the moral remains: without good insights new products can become obsolete, even before they launch.

Sparksfly has identified three ways that new venture teams can identify future threats and iterate their new product in response.

First, check for technological advancements that may replace your new product or service. To do this, we most often turn to expert panels (using multiple Delphi-rounds to draw out consensus) and look to startup databases to discover if there is investment interest in new technologies.

Next, check if there are new customer trends which may change how much customers want your new product or service. The simplest way to gather evidence on this is structured, generative customer research, focusing on customer needs and jobs to be done. You can also look for signals in quantitative data from sources such as Gartner and Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends.

Finally, check for regulatory change which could restrict your new venture. Industry or political journalism can keep you abreast of key developments - companies like Politico allow you to set up alerts for pieces of legislation around a specific theme or particular parliamentary committees. 

Sparksfly helps clients assess emerging technologies, new customer trends, and incoming regulation to ensure new products are future-proofed. If you have any questions about how to secure the long term success of your new venture, then get in touch!