As highlighted in the unfinished products strategy compass, the end in mind is to create intimacy with the product’ users thanks to a customer centric and experience driven mindset. To do so, companies must solicit feedback, handle those feedback ethically and securely. Once the feedback is analyzed the companies must act on them.
Interpreting and analyzing those feedback is fundamental to continuously improving the unfinished product. Companies need to go beyond just opening capabilities to other players in the ecosystem. Companies need to create a partnership with customers and consumers. Starting from answering simple questions as “does the customer love/hate the product?” and being ready to answer complex questions as:
- “how is the customer actually using the product?”;
- “what impact and experience do they get out of the product?”;
- “how they could get more value”;
- “how is the product enabling customers to connect on ecosystems and obtaining exponential value?”;
- “what stories customers tell about the product?”
The business model is not anymore based on selling the physical product [or service] augmented with integration APIs. The business model moves to creating an evolutionary experience amplified by the ecosystem. The economy is in the platform supporting the ecosystem and not in the product itself.
To define and to implement the strategy for successful unfinished products, companies need to look at the aspects highlighted in the following infographic.
Given the infinite nature of unfinished products the cycle below is a loop where the continuous feedback the ecosystem produces does affect and update the business strategy.
Business strategy
Unfinished products are all about consumer experience and the value consumers exchange within the ecosystem. Successful unfinished products ideation and conception do start from companies asking themselves what value to create and convey through the unfinished product to the ecosystem and how. In outlining their business strategies companies should unequivocally define:
| Value definition | What the value unit is exchanged in the ecosystem. Value unit has a wider meaning than money transaction. Value unit can be expressed in terms of: e.g. – one way to interpret the value unit of Philips Hue is the information exchange. How consumers use the lightbulb could be more relevant than the purchasing of the physical product itself. |
| Context | What role the company wants to play in the ecosystem. Is the company the “asset builder” or “service provider” or “technology creator” or the “network orchestrator”? e.g. – in Philips Hue, Philips is not only the asset builder, Philips provides services too. Creating open APIs capabilities, Philips allows third parties creating new technologies. The network orchestration is enabled by iOS and Android. |
| Participants | Who does participate in the ecosystem? Who does create the value and who does consume it? Is the ecosystem as two-sided market? |
| Interaction | How do participants interact in the ecosystem to exchange value? How are they matched to maximize the value? The interaction is critical. The perception and value each participant gains during the interaction is going to shape the consumer experience. On the other end, the feedback loop companies receive from the consumers experience, will impact and enhance the interaction itself. |
| Governance | Security, ethical and trust aspects are the key pillars for unfinished products to grow and succeed. Companies must guarantee the quality of the interactions happening in the ecosystem. |
| Business model | Is the company going to give in loan or out for free the unfinished product? Is the company requiring a subscription fee? Is the company going to sale the unfinished product? Is the company creating a business model around the APIs offered by the unfinished product instead? The way companies answer those question, and the definition of all the other aspects of the business strategy, do define the unfinished product’s business model. |
Program setup
Once the business strategy is defined and once the current capabilities are assessed, companies must set-up the program to execute the business imperative. The program set-up will articulate:
- the business objectives to achieve
- the capabilities and transformation required to enable the business strategy
- the roadmap to execute the strategy
- the bodies that will govern the transformation journey.
Platform Setup
Companies must translate the unfinished products business strategy in the platform that by design has growth capabilities. Embracing evolutionary and event-based architecture principle, the platform guarantees its ability to growth in line with unfinished product evolution. Evolutionary and event-based architecture are designed to perform to scale for handle the distributed interactions the ecosystem will generate.
To build and optimize such intimacy between companies and consumers, platform powering unfinished products must define digital twin where unfinished products behaviors are simulated and consumer experience predicted. This required the platform architecture to prioritize security and ethnicity first design principles while keeping open and controlled the ability for third parties to expand the ecosystem value. Platform powering unfinished products embed high degree of artificial intelligence and cognitive services to interpret and to augment the consumer experience.
The complexity and distribution of the ecosystem created around unfinished products very often requires multi-cloud capabilities. Those capabilities not only consume cloud services from different vendors. But more importantly, their computing power and intelligence must be distributed in the ecosystem and in the smart device with the aim to be as close as possible to the consumer’s experience. Unfinished product platforms are distributed at the edge.
Build and implementation services
Capabilities for build and implementations services (wherever built-in-house- or acquired from vendors or partners) of companies creating unfinished products enfold Design Thinking and Agile methodologies.
Every single product increment must guarantee solid security and ethical validations. Each new capability exercises fitness function to reinforce the sustainability of performances, scale and all the architecture qualities attributes.
Samples of unfinished products’ build and implementation services the ecosystem benefit from are:
- overview and security documentation
- SDKs and getting started support
- capabilities catalog and navigation options
- community support and forums
- detailed API publishing information and related documentation
- rich support content and services
- pricing guidelines.
Managed Operations
Unfinished products managed operations include delivery, support, and consumer engagement services. Delivery and support services’ scope for unfinished products covers traditional aspect of both physical and digital products as: delivery model, release & versioning management, deployment readiness, deployment management and service management.
Consumer engagement monitoring and support requires companies to set and closely measures as net promoter score and sentiment analysis. In addition to those more qualitative aspect, companies should measure also quantitative aspects as consumer engagement.
Those metrics are monitored and predicted with both direct feedback from the ecosystem as well as simulations and modeling tested on the unfinished product’ digital twins.
Conclusions
Unfinished products create a new agreement and trust between consumers and company. Consumers give away possession of the physical products in exchange of a superior experience and value gained thanks to the ecosystem. To deserve and maintain consumer trusts companies must implement high standard of security, ethnicity and quality.
Companies give away the exclusivity of implementing and evolving the unfinished products. Thanks to APIs and open specifications, the duty of enhancing and differentiating the consumer experience is fulfilled by the entire ecosystem.
The disruptions that COVID-19 is bringing nowadays are accelerating behaviors we already observed before. Companies were already facing challenges when trying to deliver product or service today embedding all the capabilities to solve tomorrow’ problems. Companies were misled in chasing perfection. There is no today’s perfection that is preserved tomorrow!
Unfinished products are ready by design to grow. They bring value to consumers well before reaching perfection. Unfinished products are built on modern and intelligent architectures. Making the most of edge computing, unfinished products create powerful, flexible and smart consumer experience.
To elaborate successful unfinished product strategy companies should perform the following activities and be ready to evolve them to guide, adjust and enhance the consumer experience.
- Business strategy – what value companies want to bring to the ecosystem and how; what business model to adopt
- Program setup – what roadmap, what accountability and ownership are required to execute the strategy
- Platform setup – giving priority to security and ethic, what architecture, what technology, what feedback loop are required to sustain the continuous improvement of the unfinished product
- Build and Implementations – what service companies must guarantee internally to develop and enforce all the right quality characteristic. What service companies must implement to engage with the ecosystem and to empower third parties to innovate the unfinished product
- Managed Operations – how companies must release and support unfinished product. How companies must engage with the consumers. Ensuring the trust and the intimacy is renewed on daily base to lead to a continuously improved experience and value added by the ecosystem.
Unfinished Products 
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