Credible
challenge – what is it, and why is it important?
In order
for something to be credible, it requires belief. Belief not only that each associate will be
affected by the challenge, but that they can influence the outcome. Belief that the challenge is possible, but
also difficult. Above all, belief that
the challenge has relevance to the group.
It’s this last piece that I want to focus on, how to establish the
belief in your stakeholder group that the defined challenge is relevant.
Relevance
in this context can really be defined through evaluating ease of execution, of
both your own and competing business.
This is not to say that any products or services in your market are
irrelevant. The opposite
is true – all products and services in your market are relevant. Depending on the evaluation, the challenge
should be approached differently. The
intent is to drive relevance and ultimately support the credibility of the
defined challenge.
The key is
understanding that it is not the challenge itself, but the response required,
that drives relevance for the stakeholder.
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| Product mapping quadrant |
The model
above demonstrates an appropriate response for each product or service in a
market, based on evaluating the ease of delivery. Note that this evaluation is intended to
cover any and all aspects of business support.
It should not be limited to the purely technical capability of
production. For example, a critical
aspect of this holistic view is the profit margin and the level that is deemed
acceptable.
The
response in each case should be to drive the consumers accessing those products
or services into the core business quadrant, by altering or switching the
product.
It is
important to note here that ‘innovation’ does not include dabbling in the core
business quadrant. Although these
changes to products identified as core business might be important to execute,
they do not represent a challenge and will not have any significant impact on
the market. Therefore they cannot meet
the definition of credible challenge.
The glaring
hole in everything I have described so far (just in case you didn’t spot it) is that I haven’t included the
introduction of *new* products – only the evaluation of existing ones. As a consequence, we have also ignored the
possibility of significantly growing the market.
To be fair,
this is partly deliberate, as my intent was to cover the larger business point
of view, where significant market disruption is to be avoided. If this is not possible, at least the pace of disruption should
be controlled. Ideally each
product falling into the convert to alternative quadrant would spawn a successive but
largely equivalent product into the reduce cost quadrant. In reality however, genuinely new to market products
could be introduced into the reduce cost quadrant, simply as a response to grow
the market. If you expand these lines of
thinking, an individual product will have a lifecycle through the model.
 |
| Product mapping quadrant showing typical lifecycle |
The
interactions are in reality much more complex, with consumers shifting in and
out of complex repertoires. However, the
intent of this model is to identify product innovation responses which are self-evidently
relevant to the stakeholders involved in the process.
Defining a
preferred shape of products in a particular quadrant (which ultimately sets the
boundaries between the quadrants), and how much of the portfolio should sit in
each quadrant, will enable effective prioritization. This prioritization can then drive a sustainable
and relevant product portfolio, with new products feeding in at one end and obsolete
products exiting then pipeline at the other.
