Product Strategy for High Technology Companies

A CEO can and should expand on the company’s vision and explain it from time to time in presentations to employees, at strategy sessions, and in annual reports. The brief vision statement becomes the theme for more in-depth explanations. These explanations may vary as the circumstances change, since visions often need to be reinterpreted over time.

IBM’s Bill Lowe also suffered from tunnel vision when he maintained an IBM-centric view of the future. In 1985, he gave Microsoft the rights to sell the jointly developed DOS operating system to other manufacturers in return for IBM’s free use of it on IBM PCs. IBM, after all, had 80 percent of the DOS market. Microsoft’s Bill Gates saw that this w

While Xerox had focused on significant tactical objectives, increasing quality to improve its performance in the marketplace, as it entered the 1990s it became more strategically focused. It developed a single-minded vision of the future: to be “The Document Company.” It believed that despite, or possibly because of, changing technology, the need f

Yet it is typical of a company that confuses general goals or a mission statement with a core strategic vision.

A core strategic vision can be changed in several ways. It can be clarified, as the company moves closer to achieving its original vision. It can evolve, as the company learns more about itself and its markets. Technology may change enough that the original vision is no longer exciting or profitable. Whatever the reason, eventually all high-technol

Clarity If a core strategic vision is too ambiguous, then there is a danger that different managers within the company will have different interpretations, and execution of the vision will not be aligned. Some additional explanation or interpretation might be required in order to clarify the vision.

On the other hand, statements such as “We aim to provide manual diagnostic tests for tuberculosis” limit the company to a single product line. This may be appropriate if the company has no desire to expand into other markets, but it is too restrictive otherwise.

Developing a core strategic vision is not a static process.

a company can develop a blind spot by unconsciously assuming that a critical factor that determines its success is unchangeable.