There is still some debate among experts as to whether 90% of new product launches in all sectors are failures or whether this is an “urban legend”, with the rate being only 40 to 50%.
Still, the risk of failure in launching a new product is high and this is also the case for technology products and services, many of which will also fail in the market. Coming too early or too late, not finding their market and customers or too expensive … there are many possible causes of failure.
However, these failures can often be explained in the technology by a limited number of “major causes of failure”, sometimes referring to the understanding of the market, the targeting or positioning of the offer, the characteristics of the launch or, more generally, the material and human resources involved.
The deadly sins of technology products
These are the “deadly sins” of technology products, found in both technology start-ups and larger companies. Most of them relate to a lack of alignment with the market and customers.
Let us quickly list some of these “deadly sins”:
- The product, service, system or solution:
- no market: it does not correspond to any real and solvent market demand
- poorly targeted and poorly positioned in relation to the competition
- undifferentiated: it has no competitive advantage from the customer’s point of view
- unfinished and under permanent technical modification
- too expensive: over-specified, lacking cost-competitiveness compared to competing products, priced too high
- too early or too late: the market is not yet mature or is already occupied by a leader
- not accompanied by the necessary services: services either absent or of insufficient level
- too easily imitable: unable to create sufficient barriers to entry
- Lack of anticipation of the reaction of the competition
- The wrong revenue model (or transaction model)
- Belief that price alone will attract customers
- Poor go to market
- Insufficient promotion and communication
We can see that many of the causes of failure of new technological products are due to a lack of customer market orientation or a lack of real listening to customers.
These failures are often the result of internal processes that were not sufficiently collaborative and did not ensure the robustness of the previous steps early enough before launching the product to the market.
It cannot be emphasised enough that the best protection against product or service failure in a technology company is close and early internal collaboration between the technical and marketing spheres and the other specialities that contribute to the design and positioning of the product.
The main challenge in technology often remains to secure all the pre-launch steps and at the same time to achieve an acceptable time to market.
