First thing worth blogging is Fridea :) I was just getting the hang of being part of a new emerging team @ Infy that focuses on creating next generation products and platforms and Fridea happens to me. Fridea – is the phenomenon of fueling your innovation @ Infosys. This is something similar to what we had at Google (TGIF). I am in love with Fridea for following reasons:
• I get to see the working product demo of so many products this week it was Cloud…if not for Fridea I would not know how our cloud ecosystem looks like.
• An overall update about the unit – makes me feel I am part of right gang.
• Celebrations – celebrating the success of our products and platforms
• Guest lecture – MY FAVOURITE part of the Friday – industries best product managers come and share the best practices. Yahoo and redbus.in were fabulous stories – so much to learn (follow on @raghavph twitter for Fridea updates).
Last week was action-packed with so many things worth Blogging. Met 2 of my entrepreneur turned venture capitalist (VC) friends, met CEO and founder of ThinkSea Consulting (another friend of mine) and few other great folks from Google (my ex-colleagues). Most of our topics we discussed in these meetings had following #tags (topics in simple terms :)) – Innovation, Services VS Product companies, Startups and VC world.
One thing that always amazes me about the product companies is the innovation engine, passion, commitment and the energy levels. Fortunately I don’t miss that anymore at Infosys coz we are emerging as leading products and Platforms Company (I am not trying to sell anything here).
Okay let me give a brain dump of what runs in my mind when you talk about product companies (I am talking about core product companies and not productized services companies).
1. Flexibility: Product companies have flexibility to change the features and timeline of the product, ultimately they run the show and decide what to implement and when to deliver it.
2. Longevity: a successful product company invests in a product and reaps the rewards, through sales, over the life of the product. The product will evolve to meet new demands and include new features but the longer it stays around the better.
3. Constant improvements: a services company typically has one chance to get it right. They sign a contract to say they’ll deliver a working solution in 6 months they deliver it and may never get to see it again other than supporting bug fixes and small enhancements. A product company will go through multiple production releases each time there is an opportunity to incrementally improve the solution - its architecture and implementation.
4. Revenue potential: I cannot compare iPhone Vs any app store application but make sure your product is also @ apple standards and not ME TOO product.
5. Survival: It is easy for a services company to survive Vs a product company.
The list goes on and on and on but the bottom line is Product Companies are fun to work.
Having said all this I want to end this post with a note: Many companies that make or distribute products lose important profit opportunities because they don't capitalize on the strategic benefits of related services. DO NOT IGNORE IP DRIVEN SERVICES REVENUE :)
