I know it is cheesy to just repost what at least 48 others (as of this writing) did, but Jason’s post -Â What did they do before you came along? affected me deeply today. And if I am going to post more – then “cheesy” is going to have to become the “new normal”.
Anyway, what really hit me was that message of product introspection applies to established companies as much as it does to start-ups. Existing companies spend as much, perhaps more, time dreaming up products and solutions, offers and packages, as any start-up. IBM alone has thousands and thousands software “products” (part #s you can buy) and each one of these was debated, researched, fought over – and in the end decided to solve some problem for a non-trivially sized market.
So next time we have a solution definition meeting, I will be the guy standing up and asking, “How are they doing it now?”
Update: It took me a couple of days to get to write this post. I actually *did* bring this up in a strategy meeting. The result was to change one of the marketing approaches to our international business. Great return on investment of reading a blog :)
