How to Create a Product Vision
A Practical, Plain-English Guide
Crafting a product vision is much like telling a compelling story; it's not just about what your product does, but the transformative journey it promises. It's crucial to articulate a clear and inspiring future, one that focuses on the customer and their needs. Here’s how I approach it:
First off, clarity of purpose is non-negotiable. Your product vision should articulate the journey you're inviting users to undertake, where they, the heroes of your story, overcome challenges with your product's help. This story anchors everything else.
The foundation lies in deeply understanding your customers' core problems. It's more than just demographics or superficial tastes; it's about empathizing with their pains and aspirations. Dive into qualitative data, user stories, and personal anecdotes if available. Let your product vision reflect a nuanced and empathetic understanding of these insights.
Define the broader impact your product aims to make. This could range from addressing climate change to optimizing workflows for small businesses. The broader impact aligns both your team and stakeholders with a unified purpose that is both ambitious and achievable.
Engage key stakeholders early on. A strong vision isn’t decreed from an ivory tower; it's collaboratively crafted. Bring in leaders from product, tech, design, and, if possible, the users. Their insights will not only enrich the vision but ensure a broader buy-in, reflecting the unique core values and differentiation needed in the market.
Never underestimate storytelling. Your vision should be evocative yet concise. Sometimes, a well-chosen metaphor or narrative can illuminate the path better than any chart or graph.
Consider the temporal aspect carefully. A vision typically spans 2-5 years, balancing aspiration with feasibility. While a moonshot goal can be inspiring, grounding it in reality is essential to motivate your team around a common goal.
Finally, communicate relentlessly. Remember, a product vision is not static; it's living and adaptable, a continual part of your organizational genome. Ensure it’s omnipresent in team meetings, onboarding processes, and external marketing strategies. It should guide decisions and adapt to change as necessary, always providing the lens through which choices are evaluated.
Let's take a closer, more critical look at several product visions through the lens of the criteria discussed above: clarity, focus on customer needs, ambition, differentiation, team unification, and adaptability.
Airbnb’s vision, "To create a world where anyone can belong anywhere," beautifully captures ambition and taps into the universal human desire for connection and community. This inspiring vision unifies the team around a powerful shared goal. However, the vision’s lack of specificity regarding its implementation might be intentionally broad. While such grand ambition can elevate tech giants to new heights, for smaller companies, this vagueness might prove more exhausting than it is motivating, as they navigate limited resources and numerous unclear pathways to realization. It’s the fine line between aspirational and actionable that companies must tread carefully, and that may change as the company grows.
Dropbox's vision, "To simplify life for people by letting them bring their stuff together in one place," targets customer-centric values of simplicity and organization, effectively aligning with their core product function. It's specific enough to guide decisions but arguably lacks a bit in the grand ambition department compared to others. This might limit its potential to inspire and differentiate significantly in a crowded market. Even taking all of that into consideration, this vision statement does have one glaring flaw: what “stuff”? Analog stuff, digital stuff, emotional baggage stuff? With the company currently playing only in the digital space, this ambiguity seems unhelpful, but perhaps time will tell if it is in fact intentional.
SpaceX's vision, "To enable the human race to become a multi-planetary species," undeniably captures ambition and differentiation, propelling it into a unique position in the market. It inspires both employees and the public with an audacious goal that addresses a grand human aspiration. While this vision is remarkably clear in its ambition, its adaptability hinges on technological advances and changing global priorities. It effectively unifies a highly skilled team under a shared banner of innovation and discovery, but it may struggle to inform how to address more immediate customer needs given its far-reaching aspirations.
Each statement contains the same ingredients but with varying emphasis. This balance reflects each company's strategic priorities and the trade-offs they've consciously made. A product vision isn’t about perfection; it's about positioning. It's the choices you make in emphasizing certain values — be it clarity, ambition, or customer focus — that reveal your company's priorities and how you aim to navigate the market landscape. Understanding where these trade-offs lie is crucial for stakeholders and teams alike as they shape the company’s trajectory and future.
