Product Vision Defined
Monday, September 29th, 2008 | vision book
“Product vision.” We hear the phrase all the time. We have a sense of what it means, but there’s a vagueness to it. A crisp definition is hard to come by. But if we’re going to get serious about product vision we’d better straighten out our semantics. So what is product vision, really?
Let’s start with the dictionary definition for the word “vision” alone, excerpted from the New Oxford American Dictionary:
Vision
1. the ability to think about or plan the future with imagination or wisdom
2. a mental image of what the future will or could be like
This is already pretty close to how the phrase “product vision” is used. When we say “Apple has great product vision” we mean vision in the first sense of the word, that Apple is “thinks about and plans its future products with imagination and wisdom.”
When we consider a specific visionary product like the iPhone, the thousands of decisions that went making such a coherent product must have been driven by a clear vision, or “mental image of what the future [product] would be like.”
This leads us to a first cut at a definition for product vision.
Product Vision
1. the ability to think about or plan future products with imagination and wisdom
2. a mental image of what a future product will be like
There is one more usage sense that is missing. Product vision is also a field of study. There are conceptual models and practical methods that help us envision great new products. These frameworks can be taught, studied, tested and refined. Product vision is a discipline that can be studied, just like engineering, medicine, law, or design.
This leads us to our third definition:
3. the branch of knowledge and practice involved with envisioning future products
Having a concise, definition to reference will help us know when we’ve got a vision and help us to tell whether it’s any good. The definition the is a stepping stone to deeper ways of thinking about vision that will help us to conduct it systematically and with clarity.
How well do these definitions hold up to your usage? Please let me know in your comments.
See also:
2 Comments to Product Vision Defined
[...] are the operative concept in product vision. I will say a lot more about this over the coming [...]
[...] we defined the vision of a product as “a mental image of what a future product will be like.” What exactly is it that we [...]
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September 30, 2008