{"id":49149,"date":"2021-09-07T16:11:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-07T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=49149"},"modified":"2021-09-20T11:06:26","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T15:06:26","slug":"product-focus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/product-focus\/","title":{"rendered":"Product-Focus: The 3 Ways It Stymies Success"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What&#8217;s wrong with product-focus in business? If the product isn&#8217;t the point, what is?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the myths about visionary companies is that they require one great idea\u2014a specific product or service\u2014to get started. In reality, visionary companies don&#8217;t take the product-focus approach. Instead, they concentrate on building a great company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Continue reading to learn why product-focus generally doesn&#8217;t lead to greatness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Product Isn\u2019t the Point<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Business schools espouse that you need a great idea backed by a solid marketing plan before starting a company. But visionary companies show that product-focus simply isn\u2019t the path to lasting success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Out of the 18 visionary companies, only three had a specific product or service in mind when they began: Johnson &amp; Johnson, General Electric, and Ford. All the others tried one thing after another, getting both hits and misses and refining their offerings along the way. Many limped and stumbled before finding their footing and eventually becoming a great success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>For example, Hewlett-Packard (HP) began in 1937 <em>without<\/em> a product. Bill Hewlett and David Packard used their engineering backgrounds to create various contraptions, from bowling lanes to telescopes to urinals, many of which didn\u2019t produce great results. They didn\u2019t let their failures dissuade them\u2014kept creating and experimenting until they acquired profitable war contracts in the 1940s.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Trouble With Product-Focus<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>A great idea shouldn\u2019t be the be-all and end-all of a company, and product-focus is actually detrimental in three ways:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>If it fails, you might get discouraged and abandon the company altogether.<\/li><li>If it succeeds, you might become too attached to it, ignoring other avenues for growth.&nbsp;<\/li><li>Any product, no matter how innovative, will eventually become obsolete. If you pin organizational success to that one great idea, then you won\u2019t have what it takes to find lasting success.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>When building a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/visionary-company\/\">visionary company<\/a>, the product isn\u2019t the point\u2014the company is.<\/strong> You can only build an enduring company if you never give up, even if your products keep failing. Instead of focusing all your attention on designing a great product, shift your focus to designing a great organization.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>For example, General Electric (GE) used Edison\u2019s direct current system, which proved inferior to their competitor Westinghouse\u2019s alternating current system. But one product didn\u2019t dictate GE\u2019s fate. They established the General Electric Research Lab, which created many more products that helped propel GE to greatness.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If you want to build a company that lasts, product-focus isn&#8217;t likely to get you there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What&#8217;s wrong with product-focus in business? If the product isn&#8217;t the point, what is? One of the myths about visionary companies is that they require one great idea\u2014a specific product or service\u2014to get started. In reality, visionary companies don&#8217;t take the product-focus approach. Instead, they concentrate on building a great company. Continue reading to learn why product-focus generally doesn&#8217;t lead to greatness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":49157,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,79,104],"tags":[493],"class_list":["post-49149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-entrepreneurship","category-marketing","tag-built-to-last","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Product-Focus: The 3 Ways It Stymies Success - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Visionary companies focus on building a great company, not selling a specific product. 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