PDP #10: How to Find a Balance Between Vision And Data When You Start a Product

What is innovation? In layman’s terms, it is something absolutely new to the market — yet, promising and revolutionary in a way. This can be a business idea, product, solution, whatever, that brings value to users and helps a company stay competitive.

Today’s market is so dynamic and fast-growing that there’s hardly any niche, which hasn’t been filled yet. Besides, with the likes of Apple and Google churning out innovative products regularly, it’s virtually impossible to win over the audience and hit it big.

To get somewhere, you have to follow not only your vision and gut feeling. You have to do lots of research and analysis of the market conditions.

CXDojo case in point: From Idea to MVP: Creating Product Requirements Document

In the 10th episode of Product Drama Podcast, we host Firas Ahmad, CEO and Co-Founder of AzamPay and Sarafu. The solutions his company delivers facilitate digital commerce operations for businesses in East Africa.

How has he managed to succeed in the competitive niche? Following the vision, or data? Learn in the podcast below.

• What are the ways of acquiring users when your product is brand-new? And how to make them trust your brand?
• How to educate people on using your app?
• Should your product be centered around customer expectations only? Or should you push your idea out and get customers to use it?
• What does it take to implement incremental changes vs disruptive changes to the product?

For a clearer picture of what you’ll discover in the podcast, here are a couple of insights Firas Ahmad shared with us:

“When we came with the idea originally, almost all customers didn’t want to order [goods] on an app. Many of them didn’t have smartphones. ”

“It comes down to balancing between what customers want and what you think you can do.”

“No customer came to Jeff Bezos and asked him for Amazon Prime.”

“To make incremental changes, you need to absolutely listen to what your customers need.”

“You need to understand what you want to show your customers that’s different from what they already do. What is differentiating you in the market?”

“You don’t have to compromise on your vision in terms of where you think you can make the biggest impact.”

Intrigued? Wait no more; click the link below to get even more helpful information.

And here’s the final touch. We’ve included the books recommended by Firas Ahmad in the course of our discussion.

• The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business — Get on Amazon here.
• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon — Get on Amazon here.