The mission alone cannot drive your product, your business or your goals.\u00a0 You need a distinct strategy to be able to win over the purchasing power of the people that will, in the end, be buying your product.\u00a0 Think about the market, the need and what you will overcome after all the sweat and tears have been poured into your product.<\/p>\n
1. Do your market research<\/p>\n
Is there a need for the product you are trying to build?\u00a0 Have you looked into the competition in the market?\u00a0 Let’s look at a couple of key factors when building a product in the social enterprise space.\u00a0 If you are selling a product, what makes your product stand out to the competition?\u00a0 Do you have better pricing?\u00a0 Is the product that you are selling an upgrade to whatever is already on the market?\u00a0 Was there a distinctive pain point for a user group you are trying to solve?<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0 Find your competition<\/p>\n
We are all competing in markets that already have a semblance of something we have created, or trying to create.\u00a0 What did you do that gives you a competitive advantage over the ones that are already in the market?\u00a0 Do you have the first player advantage<\/a>?\u00a0 Will you be the first to market and gain the shares based on the idea and product you set forth?\u00a0 If not, have you looked into the strategy of second player advantage<\/a>?<\/p>\n 3.\u00a0 Dominate by Research<\/p>\n At this point, you probably have a lot of unanswered questions.\u00a0 Do not move forward on a gut feeling.\u00a0 Also, academia is great but do not build a business case off of that alone.\u00a0 Once you have identified the problem you are solving and the way you would like to solve said problem, start getting answers from your users.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 Build a prototype first<\/p>\n Design.\u00a0 Design.\u00a0 Design.\u00a0 You can have the best idea in the world.\u00a0 But if your users don’t know how to navigate through the product, all is lost.\u00a0 Build a clickable prototype on Invision<\/a> or a mockup on Whimsical<\/a>.<\/p>\n 5.\u00a0 Test your UX\/UI<\/p>\n You can use something as simple as Google Forms to build a response mechanism to gather great feedback.\u00a0 If you are more advanced at your stage use something like Alpha<\/a> to get pointed feedback very quickly.\u00a0 You should also listen to their podcast<\/a> to hear about product management from other thought leaders.<\/p>\n 6.\u00a0 If you are a non-profit or a for-profit, look for grant funding<\/p>\n The game has changed.\u00a0 Both foundations and government institutions are more open to the social enterprise space and will accept proposals from a wide variety of organizations.\u00a0 If you have done your research and have data to back you up, take advantage of one of these opportunities.\u00a0 I recommend starting at a national level<\/a> or connecting with your local Social Enterprise Alliance<\/a> chapter.<\/p>\n 7.\u00a0 Launch in agile releases<\/p>\n Agile Product Management<\/a> is an industry standard throughout software companies.\u00a0 But the strategy and values should not be limited to just software.\u00a0 Focus on collaborating better, and innovating faster, than ever before.\u00a0 Do not try to build out your entire idea.\u00a0 Start with what matters most, a minimum viable product (MVP) to get your champion users on board.<\/p>\n 8.\u00a0 Continuous improvement<\/p>\n We all have a runway in where we are expected to launch great products that stick with the heats and minds of consumers.\u00a0 Continuously get feedback from your market.\u00a0 Go where they go.\u00a0 Ask them out for coffee.\u00a0 Have a pizza party.\u00a0 Do whatever fits your consumer base to get the best and brightest insights from the people that are using your product.<\/p>\n 9.\u00a0 Scale your product<\/p>\n Now that you have the research, the prototype, the MVP, and the feedback on your product, you should have the insight on what comes next. Fix what needs to be fixed, talk to the funders that will enable your vision to the next stage, and continually keep reaching out to your users, and have a data analytics software to see your user pipeline.\u00a0 I will always recommend Google Analytics<\/a> as a first approach because it is free, easy to implement, and will give you all the data you need as a new product.<\/p>\n 10.\u00a0 Love the experience<\/p>\n Trying to save the world is tough.\u00a0 Things are not always going to be the way they seemed.\u00a0 Sometimes the solution you manufactured will not solve the problem at hand.\u00a0 But you tried and you learned.\u00a0 It’s ok to repeat steps one through nine on a different product, or a different problem.\u00a0 Sometimes failure<\/a> teaches us more than anything else.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Here is the format for constructing your social enterprise product<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1350,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123\/revisions\/1350"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhyzy.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}