Collaborative product development aims to involve customers-as well as employees and industry partners-in the product creation process and beyond. Here’s how to lean in to that strategy and drive value with the help of your customers, your colleagues, and your partners.Product development and marketing don’t happen Mad Men-style anymore
Leverage Your Customers
Leverage your customers by having them come up with the products.
- You can do this in a low-touch way by sending a survey via email or running a poll on social media to find out what people would like to see developed next.
- User interviews or a full-on program for customer involvement.
User interviews
Run a minimum of five user interviews and observe product walk-throughs for each project
- Test prototypes with users midway through the design process to get feedback
- Watch customers use the prototypes and take notes
- Customer involvement leads to stronger PMF and product-market fit
Dogfooding
This involves using your own product or service and giving intentional feedback to employees
- There should be an obvious place to report issues and offer feature ideas
- After product launches or updates, there should be a launch-specific feedback spot
- Getting feedback from your colleagues can improve productivity and reduce turnover
Customer program
Create a community for customer involvement in product development, even building some sort of customer advisory board.
- Regardless of how you involve your customers in the process, be sure to set up some basic legal guidelines regarding copyright (e.g., what happens if a customer comes up with the next big thing).
Leverage your partners
Start with a basic affiliate program, and then, once you know which partners are the most aligned with your values and goals, start brainstorming on collaborative product ideas.
- Keep your mind open for input from all directions-and you might strike gold.
Leverage Your Colleagues
Sales teams, customer support teams, and on-the-ground employees have a ton of insight into customer pain points
- Use this information to improve your product development and gain insight into how to better serve your customers
- Have feedback built in to your everyday processes
Hackathons
Tech companies love to host internal hackathons where people from across the company get together to come up with ideas and even build prototypes-in a day
- If you don’t have the flexibility to run a full-fledged innovation competition, you can simply give your staff more autonomy in their day-to-day operations
