Development of product strategy:

the method of rapid foresight

Yury Kupriyanov

Dmitriy Bezuglyy

Presenters

Yury KupriyanovBusiness trainer, consultant

Head of practice of enterprise crowsdourcing

and knowledge management in WikiVote!

Dmitry BezugliyBusiness trainer, consultant

Founder and chief consultant

in System Approach, ltd.

Why do we need the product

strategy ?

“Since blind companies don't know where to

go, they try to go in multiple directions”...

4

What is the strategy ?

• The strategy is the choice about where

we are going to succeed.

– Where do we want to go ?

– How we will get there?

– Why we will be successful ?

5

Reality

• How many of you have clear articulated

company strategy ?

• Is it easy to create product strategy ?

• Do you have proved methodology to

create WORKING product strategy ?

• Is it easy to convince BOSS and Dev

Team that it is RIGHT strategy ?

6

What is main pitfalls in

creation Product strategy ?

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Typical problems

• Too abstract

• Blind spots

• Too technical

• Too many visions

• Hallucination

• …

• Shortsighted

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What’s wrong with current tools?

• SWOT analysis

• Porter Five Forces

• Balanced Scorecard

• Business Model Canvas

• Lean Product Canvas

• …and so on

The same problem,

even worse ?

10

There is no future

• There is no time dimension in these

models.

• There is no place for development and

growth in these models.

• All of them do not take in account possible

changes in environment of a product.

Without future perspective its

impossible to hit the target

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The other method used to

define strategy all around the

world is a Strategic session

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Does strategic session work ?

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50/50 chances

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The main reason is that classic

strategic session facilitation technic

also doesn’t has tools to work with the

future …

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Foresight framework

• Foresight is a systematic, participatory,

future-intelligence-gathering and

medium-to-long-term vision-building

process aimed at enabling present-day

decisions and mobilising joint actions.

• Foresight is the ability to prepare wisely

for the future.

“The best way to predict your

future is to create it”

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― Abraham Lincoln

Foresight – future studies

S.Pereslegin, 2011

Foresight

But foresight

• Requires many participants

• Oriented on long-term

• Has global focus

• And expensive

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Rapid Foresight (RF-method)

• 2-3 days working session

• 5 to 30 experts

• Scaling up to an industry sector, zooming in

to a single product

• Immediately accessible visual roadmap

(product timeline)

RF-method: phases

Preparation

• Research

• Analytics

• Session Planning

Working session

• Future map co-creation

• Product Roadmap design

• Roadmap validation game

Analysis

• Validate key findings vs market data

• Design the result report

Adopted working session

structureTrend analysis

Stakeholder analysis

Event analysis

Formats and policy analysis

Product positioning

Create roadmap

Validate Roadmap

1. Trend analysis

• Defining the markets (Focus areas)

• Identifying key trends in each area.

• Identifying dynamics of each trend.

• Identifying a measurable indicator for a trend.

• Time horizon for a trend.

The future canvas (map)

Xiaomi

P1 P2

Trend as process

2. Stakeholder analysis

• For each trend identify three types of

stakeholders:

– Players

• Beneficiaries

• Opponents

– Recipients

3. Event analysis

• Identifying key events of each trend:

– What event can change direction of the trend?

– What event can dramatically accelerate the

trend? (Engage more people in it?)

– What events can terminate the trend?

• For each event indicate:

– When this event would be?

– What probability for this event?

4. Formats and policy analysis

• Identifying key social interaction formats.

• Identifying key technologies for a product.

• Identifying key policies and tacit rules.

• For each of these indicate:

– What trend support our object supports?

– When would this object appear?

– What is the probability for an object?

Future canvas is Ready

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Part 2

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5. Product positioning

• So far we have future landscape

(All objects are placed on the Timeline).

• Now we can place on the same timeline:

– Features/products/platforms;

– Actions and special events.

6. Create roadmap

7. Roadmap validation

• To validate our product strategy roadmap

we can use game storming method:

– A group divides into two teams: product team

and environment team;

– Moderator gives a year (quarter) from now, and

every team tells what happens in that year

(quarter).

– Thus we validate a product roadmap vs future

environment map.

Summary

Where do we want to go ?

• We defined future landscape and placed our product on it

How we will get there?

• We will create product features

• Undertake some activity or make some things happen

Why we will be successful ?

• We aim to the position where target will be

• We have proactiveshared vision of the future

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Key points

• For systematic thinking on the future you

need a model and a method.

• Rapid Foresight is a method and a

framework for facilitation strategic sessions.

• Key concepts: trends, stakeholders, events,

technologies, formats, policies, products.

• Key features: gamestorming, rapid

roadmap prototyping, unified future vision.

Rapid Foresight principles

Future is not predetermined.

We can create the future by our actions.

We must manage the future,

not just study it.

Unified vision for the future is more

important than precise.

RF-method: products case study

• Dance Radar startup: dancing, dating and

clubbing foresight

• Wiki-meds.ru: how to changes patients,

medics and pharmacy interactions

• 1C-Bitrix (commercial CMS #1 in Russia)

strategic session

• MTS (mobile operator) sales offices

innovations foresight

• Etc ..

Extensions and add-ons

• Extensions:

– Product lanes

– Technology startups growth

– Megaprojects

– New experts (competence profiles)

– Territory/urban planning

– ‘Black Swans’ analysis

• Extra tasks:

– Knowledge gathering and sharing

– Experts identifying

– Spread of ideas/vision

– Assessment of participants

– Management and employees of future vision gap detection

Questions ?

Dmitry Bezuglyy

https://www.facebook.com/dmitry.bezuglyy

bdl@system-approach.ru

Yuri Kupriyanov

https://www.facebook.com/yksi12

yksi12@gmail.com