Gorka Santamaria · Independent product advisor
Product Direction
Bringing clarity to positioning, portfolio and priorities
Which customers should really be shaping the product?
Has the portfolio grown around opportunities rather than around a clear direction?
Are several products now solving almost the same problem?
Does the positioning match the way the product is priced, sold and delivered?
Is the software attached to a business model built around hardware?
What is the market opportunity that deserves the next serious product investment?
My approach
I begin by reading the product as a complete commercial system: the user, the proposition, the product itself, pricing, business model, channels, adoption and its role within the wider portfolio.
I then look for the tensions between those elements. Where, for example, a premium proposition meets a transactional sales channel, or a software ambition remains attached to a one-off hardware model.
From there, I reduce the situation to a small number of decisions.
The Product Direction advisory mandate is then shaped around the evidence, people and work needed to make those decisions.
A typical decision
A premium home-appliance brand had spent years adding products around a category in which it was already strong.
None of the additions looked too adventurous: a smaller model addressing small apartments, a more capable one moving upwards in price, connected functions that appeared when the category was becoming connected, and new finishes following changes and trends in interiors.
Seen individually, the decisions were difficult to argue with.
Seen together, something had changed: the range still looked coherent in a catalogue, but it was becoming less clear what the brand wanted to be particularly good at. And consequently, which products deserved the next serious investment.
The question was no longer which gap in the range to fill.
It was which direction was worth making visible through the product.
Product Direction helps turn a collection of reasonable options into a choice about where the product should go next.