I read a nice blog post on the Harvard Business Review website by Rob Johnson who worked with Steve Jobs to create the wildly successful Apple Stores. The following quote caught my eye:

So the challenge for retailers isn’t “how do we mimic the Apple Store” or any other store that seems like a good model. It’s a very different problem, one that’s conceptually similar to what Steve Jobs faced with the iPhone. He didn’t ask, “How do we build a phone that can achieve a two percent market share?” He asked, “How do we reinvent the telephone?” In the same way, retailers shouldn’t be asking, “How do we create a store that’s going to do $15 million a year?” They should be asking, “How do we reinvent the store to enrich our customers’ lives?” (emphasis mine)

This is a great point, and is especially important for product managers building high-tech products to embrace.

Here’s why… [Read more…]