Navigating the Valley of Death: About Deep Tech Product Management
Sometimes investing in deep tech requires truly innovative product management strategies and frameworks.
In the ever-evolving landscape of technology, a transformative trend has emerged: A surge venture capital and corporate investments in deep tech. This paradigm shift signifies a strategic move by investors, acknowledging the immense potential and disruptive power of deep tech innovations. Unlike conventional tech startups, deep tech ventures delve into cutting-edge technologies such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology, promising groundbreaking solutions to complex global challenges.
This trend signifies not only a financial endorsement but also a vote of confidence in the ability of deep tech to redefine industries, enhance efficiency, and revolutionize existing business models. For example, venture capital investors are backing startups with the resources needed to accelerate research, develop pioneering products, and navigate the intricate regulatory landscapes associated with their innovations.
They say with every opportunity, a challenge follows. Availability of such resources, while liberating for entrepreneurs and corporate intrapreneurs alike , poses a unique challenge for product management functions. Traditional product management often has the luxury of an existing problem and customer journey to anchor the product strategy. For a deep tech product, the customer may not even know that they have a problem and the market might not even exist.
So how should product leads go about setting up and drive organizational strategy ? Traditional product frameworks and tools like agile, kanban , design thinking or even the revered Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) dont quite fit ! The uncertainty of technological development and complexity of the products often require using a combination of traditional product management frameworks and new ones tailored to the unique challenges of deep tech. In these blogs, I aim to explore the challenges of product management in deep tech and how to overcome them.
Lets explore a few basic product questions to illustrate this:
What is the product?
The first challenge for any incoming product managers is to understand the product. Given the novelty of technology and products in this space, its very likely that they are unfamiliar with the technology and if lucky might have a surface level understanding of the technology and the markets it might serve. A similar challenge on a different vector is the technology expert stepping into the role of product management. In either situation, it is critically important to dive deep and take the time necessary to understand the applications of the technology before defining the product (and its roadmap) that takes advantage of these applications in the context of your business.
Are customers asking for it?
Finding customer demand in deep tech products with long development cycles is another significant challenge. Often customers don’t even know they have a problem yet. Product strategies need to include elements of advocacy and ecosystem development to educate potential customers about the problem. These customer development methods not only provide them means to experiment with your technologies but also aids in surfacing core painpoints that can be the focus of initial product releases.
Another challenge is that deep tech products often have long development cycles. This means that product managers need to be able to accurately predict customer demand several years in the future. This is difficult to do, especially given the rapidly changing nature of technology.
Where is the revenue going to come from?
This is perhaps the most nuanced of all the quirks that deep tech PMs face. Lets face it, direct product revenue is going to take a while. So PMs need to help find strategies to generate value for businesses while watching for leading indicators of market maturity. This challenge is universal in deep tech whether you are developing a product based on a fundamentally new technology or even if it is a novel product solving a well known problem with an incumbent technology.
Why is your approach differentiated ?
This question is usually in the comfort zone for most deep technology teams irrespective of whether you are a start up or a new technology org in large corporates. While teams tend to answer this question by diving deep into their respective technology expertise and articulate why their approach is the best approach, the role of a PM is critical in playing the neutral and weeding out the confirmation bias that creeps in by articulating the risks and potential mitigation. The PM could do so by balancing the team’s deep domain expertise with wider market understanding and competitive analysis. This is especially critical to sustain the effort through the long development cycles required for such products.
Product management in deep tech can be challenging . However, it has the potential to help develop and launch innovative products that have the potential to transform industries and shape the future. This blog is certainly not meant to be an exhaustive list of the challenges, (We haven’t even spoken about the biggest one ….Resources) but some food for thought as we delve deeper into this emerging skill.
Reach out and tell me about the challenges you face as deep tech product managers or investors/executives sponsoring such product efforts.
