Figuring out the Elephant

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.