Fighting Product Market Drift with Dave Wascha

Many companies believe that finding “product market fit”, a value proposition customers are willing to pay for, is their main goal and once they've achieved it success is inevitable. However, product market fit is the easy part and it is only the beginning. Once a company achieves product market fit it must contend with the powerful and insidious force of product market drift.

All successful companies grow, and as they grow, they increase in complexity and inevitably must add resources and put in control systems to manage and measure growth and success. However, the unintended consequences of those systems are frequently corporate inertia, risk aversion and most dangerously a loss of understanding of the customer all of which ultimately can (and often do) lead to the disruption and displacement of that once successful company.

Meanwhile companies like Amazon, Google and Apple are compounding the challenge by spending billions of dollars a year in raising customers’ expectations of any company they patronize. Our customers’ expectations and tastes are constantly shifting and evolving at a rate that companies even five years ago have never had to contend with.

At the same time barriers for new entrants, even in highly regulated and capital-intensive industries are coming down at an ever-increasing pace giving customers more choices and increasing competitive pressure.

Today the only way to remain competitive, or even viable is to create a company and culture that deeply understands customers and rapidly responds their evolving needs. In this talk Dave will discuss the driving forces behind product market drift and the pragmatic realities of managing large and complex businesses whilst maintaining a focus on the customer.