New products need to provide value. We all know that. But further than that it needs to be clear what the product does and why people should care. This will let your product escape the trap Google Buzz, New Coke (or even better Crystal Pepsi), Cosmopolitan Yogurt, Palm, other PDA’s, and countless other products that no one in the world could understand what were good for went right into. Products need to have a clear intrinsic purpose, and they need a company around them that clearly explains externally what the product is, what it does, and why we should care.
New products should have a killer application. For example Twitter’s killer app was status messages that fit into a text message. Now it’s important to note that a killer app isn’t necessarily what you will end up doing. The killer app is what you start out doing! Today I don’t care if Twitter updates fit into a text, now I use it because I already am. Killer apps allow you to find a niche that’s big enough for you to start growing your business. For example I think that in [insert random number here] years there will be a big company that deals in robots, kind of like a Microsoft of robots. If I wanted to start that company today, I wouldn’t care what robots would be in 20 years, I would find a small niche in which to start making robots today that could provide me a basis for new niches and eventually a world leadership in robots. Maybe I would start with toy robots? Certainly I could make a lot of fun stuff without requiring too much AI at the offset? Nevertheless a killer application is something more specific. It’s something that makes my robots intrinsically better than other robots. Maybe my toy robots could play board games? Certainly the technology to allow robots to play the games already exist, the only technological challenge left would be to get the robot to recognize the game, the location of the pieces and give it the ability to move the pieces autonomously.
USP’s are something else, they’re extrinsic, but they are very much related to killer apps. A USP is a Unique Selling Proposition, to understand it fully you should go to your local supermarket, locate the aisle that has toothpaste and read the tag lines. Every brand will have toothpaste for whiter teeth, cleaner teeth, anti-bacterial, anti-bad breath and a few that attempt to do it all. Think about it, do you really think there’s a lot of difference? Most of the toothpaste is just filler anyway, the parts that differentiate the products are measured in parts per million, so it likely wouldn’t be all that difficult to put all the good stuff in a single ultimate toothpaste. Continuing the robot example above, we could for example use “A friend for life”, or “Playmates forever” as a USP. This is how people understand your product. Notice that the USP don’t only separate the product from other robots, but other toys as well.
The difference between the two is that the killer application is the use of your product; the USP is what separates your product from all those others in the mind of the consumer. For start-ups however you often find yourself being so original that your product will be mentally sorted in a new category. In these cases, it pays to use the killer app to create a USP because you fortify your position as the one that provides that application. Combining a clear view of killer apps, niche markets, product positioning and business strategy will align different interests in your company so that product designers, business strategists, marketers, finance people, sales people and so on all understand what the company is setting out to do, and can agree on it.
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