One of the key determinants of success for today’s high-technology companies is product strategy—and this guide continues to be the only book on product strategy written specifically for the 21st century high-tech industry. More than 250 examples from technological leaders including IBM, Compaq, and Apple—plus a new focus on growth strategies and on Internet businesses—define how high-tech companies can use product strategy and product platform strategy for competitiveness, profitability, and growth in the Internet age.
This is the first book to present marketing strategy of high-tech products and services in a legal, economic, and global context. From software to hardware, from pharmaceuticals to digital movies and TV, the authors argue that the understanding of intellectual property rights (IPRs) is essential to devising effective marketing strategies.
Annotation This revised edition of the bestseller reflects the realities of the new high-tech marketplace where effective marketing strategy counts as much as the latest technology. New material includes case studies on how high-tech giants came out of the tech market meltdown stronger and more competitive.
In order for High Technology (HT) companies to tackle contemporary demanding market challenges, they frequently deploy time-reduction strategies with respect to product launch. Marketing of technology related products – and especially cutting edge ones – involves a complex and multidimensional bundle of specific and unique characteristics, such as the complexity of products, the intensity of the competition, confusion and/ or fear of adoption among consumers, fast pacing changes in the external environment. The very nature of the interrelations that evolve as part of the dynamic process of strategy formulation contributes further to the formulation of a very challenging environment which is described as tumultuous, volatile and turbulent. These specific features, qualities and characteristics constitute the core of the innate need for an integrated approach that requires and depends on the cooperation and coordination of specific functional competencies. This book employs a systemic approach that accommodates the integration of specialized departmental capabilities as a fundamental prerequisite and a cornerstone for the successful navigation of high-tech organizations in their extremely competitive environments. It provides a solid and extant context of compact and consistent cognitive background that is specific to the HT strategic marketing field, and a strategic tool that utilizes, relies and is built on the turbulent environment of HT rather than just overlooking, avoiding or ignoring it, and that assumes a proactive point of view, capitalizing on characteristics specific to this field, through the provision of a strategic managerial and marketing model that is overlaid onto a reliably assessed foundation of dynamic qualities, with a long-term orientation and scope, albeit one that would be easy to apply and which will generate immediate results.
Marketing is civilized warfare. And as high-tech products become increasingly standardized—practically identical, from the customer's point of view—it is marketing that spells life or death for new devices or entire firms. In a book that is as fascinating as it is pragmatic, William H. Davidow, a legend in Silicon Valley, where he was described as "the driving force behind the micro processor explosion," tells how to fight the marketing battle in the intensely competitive world of high-tech companies—and win. Blunt, pithy, and knowledgeable, Davidow draws on his successful marketing experience at Intel Corporation to create a complete program for marketing victory. He drives home the basics, such as how to go head-on against the competition; how to "plan products, not devices"; how to give products a "soul"; and how to engineer promotions, market internationally, motivate salespeople, and rally distributors. Above all, he demonstrates the critical importance of servicing and supporting customers. Total customer satisfaction, Davidow makes clear, must be every high-tech marketer's ultimate goal. The only comprehensive marketing strategy book by an insider, Marketing High Technology looks behind the scenes at industry-shaking clashes involving Apple and IBM, Visicorp and Lotus, Texas Instruments and National Semiconductor. He recounts his own involvement in Crush, Intel's innovative marketing offensive against Motorola, to demonstrate, step-by-step, how it became an industry prototype for a winning high-tech campaign. Davidow clearly spells out sixteen principles which increase the effectiveness of marketing programs. From examples as diverse as a Rolling Stones concert and a microprocessor chip, he defines a true "product." He analyzes and explains in new ways the strategic importance of distribution as it relates to market sector, pricing, and the pitfalls it entails. He challenges some traditional marketing theory and provides unique and important insights developed from over twenty years in the high-tech field. From an all-encompassing philosophy that great marketing is a crusade requiring total commitment, to a careful study of the cost of attacking a competitor, this book is an essential tool for survival in today's high-risk, fast- changing, and very lucrative high-tech arena.
This title provides a thorugh overview of the issues high-tech marketers must address, and provides a balance between conceptual discussions and examples; small and big business; products and services; and consumer and business-to-business marketing contexts.
Backed by years of rigorous academic research and industry experience, this book brings together the salient points of effective product innovation, strategic management, and innovation governance. In this book, two of the world's foremost experts, Dr. Robert G. Cooper and Dr. Scott J. Edgett, take you step-by-step through the critical phases of developing your own product innovation strategy - a master plan for your business's entire new product effort. No other business authors give you this kind of uncomplicated narrative, informed by significant industry experience and with examples of outside-the-box thinking. This ist your guide to setting your company up for dominance in the marketplace.
"Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of "achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people". Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams"--
Since 1994 when I first published the concepts of product-platform strategy, Product Strategy for High Technology Companies (McGraw Hill, 2001) has become a mainstay of strategy in many industries, particularly for high-technology companies. Some of the most successful companies implemented a product-platform strategy, and many of those who didn't failed as a result. In this new book, as well as others in this series, I expand and update these concepts, adding new lessons learned in the past decade, and illustrate them with current examples. Since there are several new concepts and so many great examples, I've decided to update Product Strategy through a series of new books, each focused on a particular product strategy topic. This first book, Understanding and Applying Product-Platform Strategy, starts with the core underlying concepts of platform strategy, based on workshops I have been giving around the world over the last few years. There are several new concepts that I added or expanded on in this book. The concept of platform layers expands on original concept of elements in complex platforms. As product platforms evolved to be more complex, organizing them into layers became logical. Platform robustness is introduced to address the issue that not all platforms are created equal, and this builds on the concept of vectors of differentiation in my original book. Competitive advantage can come from having a more robust product-platform strategy than a competitor. The issues around a platform as part of an ecosystem are now more relevant and discussed in more detail. This has become increasingly important, as more companies have implemented platform strategies that are linked with others. Also as more companies have leveraged product-platforms into new markets, the concepts of derivative platforms have become more important. So we will examine derivative platforms in more detail.
How do today’s most successful tech companies—Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla—design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of people around the world? Perhaps surprisingly, they do it very differently than the vast majority of tech companies. In INSPIRED, technology product management thought leader Marty Cagan provides readers with a master class in how to structure and staff a vibrant and successful product organization, and how to discover and deliver technology products that your customers will love—and that will work for your business. With sections on assembling the right people and skillsets, discovering the right product, embracing an effective yet lightweight process, and creating a strong product culture, readers can take the information they learn and immediately leverage it within their own organizations—dramatically improving their own product efforts. Whether you’re an early stage startup working to get to product/market fit, or a growth-stage company working to scale your product organization, or a large, long-established company trying to regain your ability to consistently deliver new value for your customers, INSPIRED will take you and your product organization to a new level of customer engagement, consistent innovation, and business success. Filled with the author’s own personal stories—and profiles of some of today’s most-successful product managers and technology-powered product companies, including Adobe, Apple, BBC, Google, Microsoft, and Netflix—INSPIRED will show you how to turn up the dial of your own product efforts, creating technology products your customers love. The first edition of INSPIRED, published ten years ago, established itself as the primary reference for technology product managers, and can be found on the shelves of nearly every successful technology product company worldwide. This thoroughly updated second edition shares the same objective of being the most valuable resource for technology product managers, yet it is completely new—sharing the latest practices and techniques of today’s most-successful tech product companies, and the men and women behind every great product.
