As the market leader, how should we think about defense as it relates to product strategy?

Love this question as well, and I'll approach it from a couple different perspectives. First, I'd acknowledge that some markets are so big or fast growing that multiple amazingly successful winners can emerge. As of today, Apple is worth $2.8T and Microsoft is worth $2.25T. While I'm sure both companies wouldn't mind adding their other's market share to their portfolio, I also think any reasonable person would consider both outcomes desireable. This example is not to say there's not need to play ...Read More

If your org is driving significant benefit from a leadership position in the market -- whether that's a brand that drives an acquisition funnel, operating efficiency from scale or something else, it's reasonable to think about how to maintain that lead. Consider carefully why you are in a leadership position versus other customer options (competitors, substitute products etc). Is it unique? Sustainable? Are there small firms that could steal share by, for example, providing a more specialised or ...Read More

Here are some key strategies to consider when thinking about defense in relation to your product strategy: 1. Innovation and Continuous Improvement Stay Ahead with Innovation: Continuously innovate and improve your products. This could mean enhancing existing features, introducing cutting-edge technology, or creating entirely new product lines that set industry standards. Fast Iteration: Adopt an agile approach to quickly iterate and refine products based on user feedback and emerging trends, en ...Read More

Love this question! Market leaders often get very accustomed to singing their praises and forget to regularly reflect on themselves and their competition. I would advise you and your PMs to regularly assess your feature sets and do competitive walkthroughs of your capabilities against your top competition in the landscape. This will help you spot any potential up and comers in the space. From a strategic perspective, what got you where you are may not get you where you want to be. So, some criti ...Read More

Three dimensions of product investment strategy to consider for market leaders: Sustaining your core differentiation for your target customer group  Creating an environment to expand customers or use cases  Groundwork for strategic disruption Lets review these three dimensions in detail:  Core differentiation for customer engagement and retention: Protect your core product-market fit  Measure new product launches against customer and business engagement KPIs Continue to also review existing feat ...Read More

The instinct most market leaders have is to play defense by protecting what they have. A competitor ships something and the reaction is "we need that too." That's exhausting and usually wrong. You stay ahead by delivering better outcomes and investing forward, not by playing whack-a-mole every time someone ships a feature your users might like. The real defensibility of a market leader isn't the feature set. Features can be copied in a quarter. What's hard to replicate is how deeply you're embed ...Read More

To defend your position, work on: Strengthen your existing competitive advantage. If you are not very clear on what are the sources of your current competitive advantage, identify them and develop metrics and a way to measure their effectiveness. Your objective is to maintain and grow the competitive advantage that you already have. Explore additional sources of advantage. As the business grows and the market evolves there will be opportunities to build more kinds of moats in the product and the ...Read More