(2013-02-03) Cagan Vision Pivots Vs Discovery Pivots

Martin Cagan on Product Vision Pivots vs. Product Discovery Pivots. I see too many teams and startups giving up on their product vision too early. The purpose of this article is to try to highlight this issue by contrasting the two very different types of product pivots. I call the two types “Vision Pivots” and “Discovery Pivots.”

Your product vision describes the big picture of what you are trying to achieve, typically over a 2-5 year timeframe.

*the job of the product organization is to make that vision a reality. So we don’t work for a few weeks or even a few months and then just declare it’s not happening and we should do a pivot. We will typically work hard for many months on a product vision and not even entertain the possibility of giving up.

That said, it’s also the job of the product organization to be able to distinguish vision from illusion.*

If we determine that the vision itself is the issue, that is when a vision pivot may be in order. In my experience, this is usually because we find we’re solving something that customers just don’t care enough about. (compelling)

this is not usually the issue. The problem is that too many teams give up before they can come up with a good solution that meets the needs of this market.

In contrast, while working on making the product vision a reality, during product discovery we will need to try out a great many ideas. We expect that many of these ideas won’t work

We should be open to alternative models to monetize, or different ways of fueling growth, or different features to drive activity, than the ones we expected. Remember, these are all just details. Your vision is not to offer a subscription model vs. a transaction model. That’s just one particular approach to monetization. (Some of this seems very high-level, like BusinessModel/LeanCanvas level. Might be harder to get exec buy-in. But, still, worth considering....)

being good at product discovery means being very open to the many forms of discovery pivots.