You’re creating the future: a product or service that does not yet exist. How do you ensure your team is on the same page? Do you tell them how they will build it? How it will work? Or do you paint the picture of how it will make people’s lives better?
Your investors and partners are the same. Your product vision is the core of your business vision, so you want key people to understand and love it. Still, formalising your product vision seems like another chore in your busy schedule. You might even fear your idea will lose some of its magic in the harsh light of the day.
A clear representation of your vision:
- Helps you communicate the vision to your team, your partners, and potential investors. You can be confident that you’ve passed on the key elements and not missed anything out.
- Inspires others! People who believe and buy-in to your vision will go above and beyond the call of duty to make it a reality.
Here are three keys to get you started on composing your agricultural product vision.
Start with the users
Identify who your intended users are and are not. What problems will you solve for them? How much do those problems matter to your intended users? Are you tackling their problems or forcing your own solution?
The Einstellung Effect is a psychological term. It describes how we can fall in to the trap of applying a familiar approach or solution to problems. When all we have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. This is a great reminder to us to fall in love with problems, not our solutions. Your agritech product vision should describe the problems you want to solve.
Think big
The eventual picture is larger than your first release. Think about what your vision looks like over the next three, five, or even ten years.
At the same time, your first product release (or releases) don’t need to fulfil the entire vision. Break the plan into bite-size chunks that you can achieve and learn from them on the way.
Trace weak signals and trends
Take a view about the way we will solve problems in two to five years. You’re creating the future, so yesterday’s rules may not apply.
I’m not suggesting divorce from reality. Ensure you have time and space to read, research, and test. Seek to understand how people might work in the future, and how your product might contribute. If your product is a service (to some extent all are), how might it fit with the ways your users want to communicate?
Your product vision is not a product specification. It’s not an elevator pitch either. Whether it is a story or bullets in a slide deck, it’s the way you bring your team and partners with you on the journey. It should help them pull together and solve the problems that count.
As your Agritech product vision evolves, there is one more thing to do: communicate relentlessly. Share your vision with your team and your partners. Evolve it based on what you learn.