How to Design Products for Success in a Foreign Market
(excerpted from the e-Guide How to Localize Products for Success in a Foreign Market, available at http://www.silkrc.com/XPublications/catalog_localprod.htm, edited by William R. Dodson)
... Coca Cola tried marketing its domestically successful two liter bottle in Spain. It finally withdrew the bottle from the Spanish market when it discovered that the refrigerator compartments were too small to hold the liter size.
Develop products
for foreign markets by gaining consensus on the most important product
specifications early in the product development lifecycle through Joint Product
Design sessions…
The Project
Facilitator’s most effective and enduring platform for building consensus early
on the product development team is the Joint Product Design (JPD) session.
Initially, the entire team (or at least core representatives from each of the
areas on the team) can come together to listen to one another and to thrash out
differences of intention, vision and approach ahead of actual product
development.
The optimal
foreign-markets product development team has four roles to fill:
€
The
Foreign Consumer Representative(s)
€
Project
Administration And Coordination
€
The
Technical Experts
€
The
Management Patron(s)
Each
group has its own roles and responsibilities within the project for which it is
responsible, and each of the members within the group represents contrasting
interests and perspectives on the project.
The Project
Facilitator can get to know the relevant business staff, while the staff learns
to accept the hybrid role of Project Facilitator.
The Project Facilitator's goal through the JPD process is to produce a
Requirements Specification for the product that incorporates, builds on and
supersedes the parochial priorities and agendas of individual stakeholders. The
process ensures the product development is well grounded in the needs and
expectations of consumers, managers and executives.
JPD consists of four
stages. In succession, they are:
€
Presentation of the JPD Framework;
€
Project Scoping;
€
Preliminary Definitions Development;
€ Detailed Requirements Development.
THE JPD SUCCESSION
Presentation of the
JPD Framework happens immediately after the Project Kickoff. The Project
Kickoff is a political device that vests executive and middle-level management
in the product development effort as a whole.
The Project
Facilitator sets the tone for the entire project through the Framework. She
explains the JPD approach and communications models, report structures, issue
and conflict resolution pathways. The Framework involves all the members of the
project team, as defined above. Presentation of the Framework for JPD can take
from 1/2 day to a full day, depending on the scope of the project.
Scoping will involve the Management Patron and the core team of
representatives from each of the project groups identifying project priorities
across departmental lines. Most important, the project team will jointly decide
what activities lay within the domain of the project, and what is beyond the
span of the effort. Scoping the project, after the initial JPD Framework
presentation, will likely take about one to two days.
Preliminary Definitions
Development
Developing preliminary
definitions takes about one to two days. The primary tool to establish general
product parameters is the Context Diagram, which represents the product
functionality in relationship to the portfolio of products the organization
already supports. Management patrons should be involved in this aspect of the
discussion since Management typically has very strong ideas about the
dimensions of the product and what the product should present to customers about
the organization. Further, it would waste a lot of the project’s time and
budget for the team to make decisions the Management Patrons would and could
veto, forcing a re-discussion of the issues.
Detailed
Requirements Development
Detailed requirements
can take up to five to ten days in-session, total, to develop. The Project
Facilitator should turn around requirements documents within a couple days of
the conclusion of each session. The best pattern is two sessions, then a
document consolidation and review session by elected members of the core team,
then another two sessions and so on until consensus is reached that product
specifications respect the cultural demands for success of a targeted foreign
market.
William R. Dodson is Managing Director of Silk Road Advisors,
L.L.C., a management consultancy that develops and positions products and
people for success in international markets. He is the contributing editor on
international business to the American Management Association’s (AMA) MWorld Journal
of Management, and writes the weekly column “The Cultured Business”, found at www.silkrc.com and at the Global Perspectives
section of the AMA’s member website. He can be reached at sradvisors@gmail.com or +1 (847)722-7817.
NOTE: Cross-cultural
business blunder used with permission of David Swenson, College of St. Scholastica, Duluth, Minnesota, USA.