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Readers (and listeners) by now have recognized my interest in exploring B2B product building, especially the milestone of introducing a “next act” (I have a whole Maven course about this). In fact, I write and share about this topic so much that my former colleagues have started introducing me to experts that I can learn from. Not long ago, I was connected with Inessa Lurye, a product leader and healthcare innovator who most recently led new program development for subscription software and connected hardware products at Hinge Health.
In our brainstorming session before we recorded this episode, it became obvious that Inessa had tackled the problem of overcoming innovation inertia from several angles that would make for a rich discussion: regulated industries, stakeholder bias, GM model, gatekeeper navigation, etc.
The first and most foundational aspect of new product introduction (NPI) is aligning with company leadership on what outcome the product is intended to drive for the business.
But whatever outcome you align on with leadership, there’s a time horizon component that’s important to spell out as well. This insight was prompted by a great question from the audience - namely what are you supposed to do when execs say they want multiple different outcomes to play out with a single investment?
And expanding on what you (as a product leader) are supposed to do, part of the NPI playbook that Inessa and I strongly agreed on was the need for the PM to operate like a GM and drive the initial set of deals. This can be new and uncomfortable for a lot of product leaders working on 0-to-1 offerings for the first time, but in this clip Inessa spells out the multiple benefits of getting into the sales cycle firsthand.
And that exposure starts long before the product is built by asking a fundamental question about the target audience and expected buying behavior. I purposely highlighted this snippet because I’ve seen many a product and/or and sales executive try to answer this question when trying to launch the new product; it’s too late at that juncture and this is something PM and GTM need need to collaborate on before the investment is even greenlit.
The conversation then dovetailed into the possibility of new products cannibalizing revenue from the existing portfolio. PMs can be lulled into a fantasy that the revenue attributed to their product line is all the same, but sometimes it’s shifting budgets as opposed to new spend; there is a difference between slicing the pie in new ways vs selling a new flavor altogether. In this clip, Inessa explains the different types of cannibalization and how to plan for that (it’s more art than science).
If there’s one takeaway from the discussion that I hope 0-to-1 product builders internalize and incorporate, it’s patience. More and more, companies and execs laud themselves for moving fast and reacting to incomplete signals, but to me operating on a long-term time horizon is the epitome of discipline. And discipline around strategy pays off better than constantly going back to the drawing board.
Over the course of our hour together, we hit on several other aspects of building 0-to-1 products in established companies, including:
how to navigate external stakeholders in a regulated industry like healthcare
conviction as the key ingredient that allows teams to persist and persevere
the benefits (and necessity) of a GM model when introducing new products
