No product can escape the fate of the product life cycle.
文:路江涌
February 5, 2019, in the face of a sharp decline in iPhone sales, Apple regenerated internally, and Apple’s senior vice president, Angela, who was 8 times the annual salary and was also CEO’s successor. Angela Ahrendts will leave in April this year.
In fact, every product has a product life cycle, even if it is called the iPhone of the world’s greatest consumer products.
We divide the enterprise life cycle into four phases: starting phase, growth phase, expansion (mature) phase, and recession/transformation phase.
Reviewing Apple’s 10 years, every year Apple’s mobile phone sales and release date are marked on the horizontal axis, you can get a product life cycle diagram of the iPhone.
iPhone product life cycle
On June 29, 2007, the first iPhone of the iPhone was sold, and only 1.36 million units were sold that year. You have to know that in 2007, Nokia sold 437 million mobile phones worldwide. In 2007, it can be seen as the development lead of the iPhone.
In 2008, iPhone sales increased to 11.63 million units, an increase of more than 8 times.
From 2009 to 2012, iPhone sales have grown at a rate that is not more than double the annual production. In 2012, the iPhone’s annual sales have reached 125 million units.
On October 5, 2011, Jobs passed away. The death of Joe’s lord also has a significant impact on the development of the iPhone. Some fruit powders are still using the iPhone 4S released in 2011, because they think this is the last iPhone that Jobs personally participated in.
2013,iPhone sales have only increased by 20% compared to 2012. Sales growth in 2014 further dropped to 12%. Although, in 2015, iPhone sales reached a record high of 230 million units so far.
In 2016, iPhone sales fell for the first time in history, dropping to 215 million units.
In 2017, Apple released the iPhone 8 and 10th Anniversary Edition iPhone X. The iPhone 8 has not received much market enthusiasm because of its little innovation. Due to some innovations in the iPhone X, sales of the iPhone in 2017 rose slightly to 223 million units. Although it did not reach the historical high point of 2015, it is still a temporary decline.
On January 3, 2018, Apple lowered its revenue forecast, saying the reason was that the number of users upgrading to the new iPhone was small, and the company’s sales performance in the Chinese market was weak. . .
This example of the iPhone shows that any product can’t escape the fate of the product life cycle.
The reason why companies have different characteristics at different stages of the life cycle is because the elements that make up the enterprise have different characteristics at different stages of the life cycle of the enterprise.
In other words, users, organizations, products, and markets, these four enterprise elements will change with the life cycle of the enterprise.
1 Users
Druck said that “the sole purpose of a company exists is to create customers.” The implication behind this sentence is that companies must be able to create value for users.
We can understand users in terms of user characteristics, user needs, and user choices.
Who is the user, what are the characteristics?
Why are users willing to pay for the product?
What does the user’s process of selecting and using a product or service look like?
We can further decompose the three elements of user characteristics, user requirements and user selection.
User characteristics can be broken down into physiological, psychological, and social characteristics of the user.
Personal physiological characteristics include age, gender, height, etc.
Psychological characteristics include temperament, ability, personality, etc.;
Social characteristics include work, income, behavior, values, etc.
Let’s look at an example.
Before deciding to get the APP, the Luo Ji thinking team did a user analysis of the Luo Ji thinking users on the WeChat public number, Himalayan, Youku and other platforms.
They found that users of Luo Ji thinking are mostly young men, with an average age of 34;
Half of the users come from economically developed regions, and about 40% are from five provinces and cities such as Guangdong, Beijing, Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Zhejiang;
User revenue is generally high, with nearly half of users using the iPhone; users have a strong demand for knowledge content;
Users have unique content preferences and are most preferred for knowledge in the areas of business, internet, entrepreneurship, psychology, and trends;
Users are very active and active. Not only will they read the article itself when they read the article, but many people will also browse the big comments below.
Based on the analysis of Luo Ji’s thinking users, Luo Zhenyu and his team felt that they need to provide users with richer content. They felt that the content service is coming soon. In their words, it was “hand caught.” A big card.”
So, on November 18, 2015, I got online. Since its launch, the core concept has been to “save time for users and focus on knowledge services to help users complete knowledge upgrades”.
This core idea has remained the same because it still matches the user characteristics of the user.
2 Organization
Organize this element and answer another important question for the company, that is, “Who is the company made up of, and how is it organized?”
This problem seems simple, and it is actually the key to the company’s “live”.
The reason why this question is simple is that the company is naturally composed of the company’s leaders, teams and employees.
The reason why this problem is the key, as Ren Zhengfei said, “The life expectancy of a company can be much longer than the life of an individual, but in most cases it is much shorter than the life of the individual. The reason for this difference is that Can you organize the right people in the right way?”
Ma Yun has shared a story.
Once he saw a small in JapanThe store hangs a card at the door and says, “Celebrate the 152th anniversary of our store.” Ma Yun is very curious, this store actually has 152 years, he ran into the store to see, it is estimated that the store will not exceed 20 square meters, an old man and an old lady are making cakes.
Ma Yun asked: “You have 152 years in this store?!” The owner replied: “It is 152 years. Our family provides cakes to the Japanese Imperial Palace.” Ma Yun asked: “Why don’t you want to make a bigger one?” A: “It’s very good. We have done it in this place for generations. We are very enjoyable.” Ma Yun asked: “What about your children?” The owner answered: “Children study at Kyoto University, but after graduation, they will also Let this store go on.”
The small shop in this story shared by Ma Yun is a family business.
The reason why some family businesses can last for hundreds of years is because they organize people in the most natural way, linking the life of the company to the life of the family.
So, to achieve the goal of “live” and accomplish the mission of creating value for users, companies must organize the right people in the right way to do the right thing.
We look at organizational elements, at least three points, including: leaders, team members, and organizational management.
There is a saying that “The train runs fast, all with the headband“. Leaders are the core of the enterprise. There is a saying in the entrepreneurial circle called “The cognitive boundary of entrepreneurs is the boundary of entrepreneurial enterprises“.
In the same way, the pattern and vision of business leaders determine the success or failure of business development.
A company with only a leader as a light pole commander certainly can’t, but also has a team and employees.
In general, the best combination of executive teams and leaders is complementary in skills and values. A good team usually has the following characteristics:
1. There is a clear core of the team, which is the business leader;
2. Team members trust each other, respect each other, and understand each other;
3. The brothers should settle accounts and the shareholding structure should be clear and reasonable.
There are only leaders and team employees in the company who can’t do it. The important thing is to organize these well. To do a good job in organizational management, we need to start from the aspects of organizational structure, organizational system and organizational culture. Organizational structure, organizational system, and organizational culture can be seen as the skeleton, muscle, and blood of the organization, respectively.
The organization of this body can stand up because of a strong organizational skeleton, a strong organizational system of muscles and ample tissue culture blood.
3 products
This product element answers another important question for the company, which is “What the company provides and how to mention itNg>for“?
If the creation of user value is the goal of the enterprise, and the appropriate personnel and organizational form is the form of the existence of the enterprise, then the product or service is the means by which the enterprise realizes the goal of creating user value and obtaining the partial value created.
As part of our strategic thinking, we need to start with product development, marketing and business models when considering products.
Product development says that the product is made, marketing promotion says that the product is sold, and the business model says that the money is recovered.
Product development has two main types of models.
Traditional companies often adopt the waterfall product development model, strictly following the pre-planned requirements analysis, product design, development and implementation, product verification, product maintenance and other steps.
Waterfall product development assumes that the problems faced by users and the characteristics of the products are known. However, rigorous processes are difficult to adjust to changes in demand, and product development failures are costly.
Even in the software industry, traditional product development methods are waterfall development.
You may have heard a famous quote from Bill Gates: “Microsoft is only 18 months away from bankruptcy.”
The message behind this sentence is that Microsoft has two main products in alternate development, one is Windows and the other is Office. As long as a product development fails, Microsoft is in danger.
Some companies with mobile Internet genes tend to adopt agile development methods. For example, the development slogan of Xiaomi Company is “quick iteration, follow-up”, and the idea they rely on is agile development.
Traditional marketing is indiscriminate marketing for all people or specific groups of people, which is wide-ranging but poorly targeted.
In recent years, with the application and popularization of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data and cloud computing, the marketing of products has undergone great changes.
Now, if you search for a product on Taobao or Jingdong, a product similar to this product will form a column and continue to rotate on the homepage of your shopping app.
4 Market
In addition to users, organizations, products, and one element is the market, the market, answering another important question of the enterprise, that is, “How is the environment in which the enterprise exists, is it beneficial to the development of the enterprise?”
The most common slogan that Apple uses is “reinventing…what.” For example, Apple reinvented the music player with the iPod, reinvented the phone with the iPhone, and reinvented the tablet with the iPad. However, Apple did not claim to have “invented…what”.
The reason is that Apple is actually a master of technology trends, good atThe long-term is to make good use of these technologies and innovate products before some technologies reach maturity.
Being a business, only technology is definitely not working, and there must be capital and resources. Traditional management theory analyzes resources as internal factors. The reason behind this is that traditional management theories are mostly based on the management of large enterprises, and there are resources within large enterprises.
But there is no resource inside the startup, and everything needs to be found in the market. As the company grows up, internal resources will gradually increase, but the capital and resources needed for the key moments of enterprise development will still be found in the market.
Doing business, in addition to considering trends and capital, also consider competition and cooperation in the market. In recent years, the platform business model has been particularly hot. One of the important reasons behind this is that the platform business model places special emphasis on the role of the complement.
In the platform business model, the complement provides products or services for users to choose from. The more complementary and the higher the quality of the products offered, the more attractive the enterprise platform is to users.
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