As a student of product management, I have always wondered
about how a guy thought of a Smartphone. What was the one thing that inspired him to
put together a combination of hardware, software and services that has become
the most loved, cherished and a times feared gadget for billions worldwide.
Yes, the technological advancements allow all kinds of innovations
to come to life quickly. So much so, that by the time the first version of the
product enters maturity stage of market adoption, we have another version
spinning its wheels at the starting line -seducing innovators to shell of some
more money just to ride the new coolness
wave. Interestingly, for someone like me the beauty
not lies in the new and improved versions as they are “improvements” or “backlogs”
as they say in product management lingo.
What intrigues me is, the kind of effort that went in while conceptualizing
the first minimum viable product, prototyping it and above all identifying the first
minimum viable customer segment that would ensure that the product becomes a
blockbuster every time an improved version hits the market.
For a late Gen-Xer who has seen a multitude of information
and communications mediums and devices mature and become what they are in their
current form, I try and use my personal experience to decode what could have
been going inside the head of a Product manager who figured out the proverbial “Elephant”. Everyone remembers that childhood story of
blind men and elephant, where every blind man brings his experience, needs and personality
to identify an aspect of elephant’s body and tag it to the closest thing they
thought it resembled. Until the time a man without visual imparity walks past
and tells them that what they are experiencing is a part of an elephant, every
blind man thought they were going to take home a rope, a tree stump or a spear.
To
me a product manager essentially resembles the last guy in the story who
entered and figured out the elephant and has entrepreneurial ability to
identify a large enough market to be satisfied by mobilizing enough resources to replicate
that elephant episode multiple times throughout the life cycle of the product
or an enterprise.
Coming back to the smartphones, I remember first time my
father decided to apply for a telephone at my house in the heydays of telecom
revolution in India. At that point in time the sole need was to be able to pick
up the phone and dial a number to reach out to someone and pass on a
message. Fast forward 5 years and we had
a cordless phone as my mother wanted to be able to make and receive phone calls
while she was in kitchen, doing laundry, or even while sitting out in the lawn
soaking up the winter sun. My first brush
with the mobile phone was when my younger brother decided to buy and use one to
support his always on the run lifestyle. He had just started a small business
venture and had to travel la lot, so in order to ensure that he was always a
phone call away from us I supported him having this latest Motorola Mobile
which by today’s standards would not even qualify as a feature phone. But hey,
it was a big thing back then. He used to flaunt the phone as a trophy. By the way, I bought my first Nokia Mobile phone
when I was doing my MBA, just for the sake of being reachable to my mother in
case she wanted to remind me to have my diner on time.
By that time I had become an avid internet user .Reading and
replying to email, popping chat windows became a part of my daily routine. By
the time I was 2 years into my job email had become an integral part of my
professional life and a need for staying on top of my email was felt. A mobile
phone that could support email was readily available to satisfy that need or I
should say more of a want. I bought my
first camera couple of months after I replaced my mobile phone. And I loved it
so much that I used to carry it with me everywhere, until I lost it. I love
taking pictures, so not having my camera handy when I needed to click one was something
that triggered my search for a mobile phone with a great camera
integrated. I finally bought a Nokia smartphone,
the device was that made calling, emailing, texting, taking and sharing picture
as simple as a click of a button. Then
came gtalk and facebook, and surprisingly they became a part of my mobile and I
simply could not have enough of my mobile. Twitter was an icing on the
cake.
And so began the story of a smartphone user who is so addicted
to this godforsaken device that he sleeps with it underneath his pillow.
But hey, wait a minute.
Why is it that every time I wanted to improve my mobile phone, I always
had an option available for me within the kind of money I could spend? Am I
being watched? Am I so important that my needs should be given such a high importance?
And above all, what’s in it for the guy who is doing this?
I looked around and what I saw was amazing, there were
multiple people doing similar things, with similar kinds of needs buying
similar kinds of devices. Someone is watching us, the proverbial blind men
trying to figure out the side of elephant facing us. He has figured that as we
move along our lives we are going to need multiple aspects of our mobile
phones.
Of personas and user
stories
While I was busy going through my life doing things important
to me and making money, someone out there was busy taking notes, making sure
that he understood me as a person and as a user of multiple products and
services through my daily routine. He
knows that I am going to check my email the moment I open my eyes early morning
as my mobile phone is still trying to wake me up on the time I thought I will
get up. I will listen to my favourite music while on my morning run. He has
figured out that I am also going to click couple of pictures through the day
and upload them on some social networking website, and that I am going to lose
my way while driving to an unknown place
. Above all he was smart enough to identify
people similar to me and ensure that he had them in great numbers and he is
resourceful enough to satisfy the market with a great looking smartphone that
finds its users across a age bracket of anywhere between a 15 year old teen to
a 35 year old corporate worker.
Then there are few things that I don’t do what my smartphone
at all For example, I don’t play games at all.
I don’t click selfies and above all I don’t bother about replying to
SMS. But then again, its about figuring out the minimum viable product,
figuring out the minimum viable market, above all its about figuring out the
elephant.
Welcome the product manager.
