Dividing

Dividing

I read a great book yesterday called Focus . You may have heard what it's about since Ries (and Ries & Trout) have written lots of marketing books that you have probably seen (like Positioning, which I think I read in the 7th grade!). The bottom line is your strategy should be focused, because that's how to win. Don't cover bases, don't spread across the segments, don't create features and variants, and so on. Create a product with a brand and a strategy that addresses a need for a certain group of people. And don't clutter it.

The very interesting insight that he takes as a premise has had me noodling for a counterexample. His point is "convergence never happens, the opposite does". The aspirin market divides and turns into the aspirin and acetaminophen and then again. Cars becomes sports cars and sedans and minivans etc. Phones become long distance and local and mobile and broadband.

I can't think of a product introduction or new category that actually collapsed two distinct ones -- despite how often heralded the PC + TV or phone + cable or mobile phone + music player or any other combination happens to be.

Think about the things that mobile phones do. Consider that perhaps the interesting features they are adding are in fact not "the phone absorbing some other piece of functionality" but rather the emergence of specialized types of devices that will one day be very different from phones!