Win-Win Product Development!

There are 3 types of people. Those who only care about what's good for customers, and those who only care about what's good for business, and those who care about both!

If you only build what's good for customers, you will run out of money, shutdown the business, and your customers will stop enjoying the great products you built for them.

If you only build what's good for business, your competition will eat your lunch by offering more value to your customers, so you would run out of customers, and stop making that extra money you were getting used to earning.

The sweet spot is in the middle. Where a fair exchange of value happens between your business and the customers. Under fair market conditions, you and your competitors will be competing on how to efficiently maximise the value delivered to and extracted from customers.

This sounds like common-sense, but in our daily lives I find that many forget this basic rule for building great sustainable products and businesses that keep adding value to customers as long as possible.

Still, what about the trade-off zone? This is the tricky part. This is where you and your team will have most debates. Decisions are not black and white. Just think together about how to keep the value exchange balanced.