Читать книгу The Lean Product Playbook - Olsen Dan - Страница 13

Early in my product career, Intuit's founder Scott Cook helped me solidify the concept of problem space versus solution space when I heard him talk about TurboTax. Speaking to a group of product managers, Scott asked us, “Who is TurboTax's biggest competitor?” Multiple hands shot up. At the time, the other major tax preparation software in the market was TaxCut by H&R Block. After someone confidently answered, “TaxCut,” Scott surprised us all by saying that the biggest competitor to TurboTax was actually pen and paper. He pointed out that, at the time, more Americans were still preparing their taxes by hand using IRS forms than all tax software combined.

This example highlights another advantage of clear problem space thinking: having a more accurate understanding of the market in which your product is really competing. Those of us in the audience were narrowly thinking in solution space of the “tax preparation software” market, as defined by the two main software products. Scott was thinking in problem space of the broader “tax preparation” market – one that would also include tax accountants to whom customers delegate their tax preparation. As the previous chapter discusses, a market is a set of related customer needs, which rests squarely in problem space. A market is not tied to any specific solutions that meet those needs. That is why you see “market disruptions”: when a new type of product (solution space) better meets the market needs (problem space). New technology can often enable a market disruption to deliver similar benefits at a much lower cost. Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VOIP) is a great example of a disruptive technology that has replaced traditional telephone service. At first, the sound quality of VOIP calls couldn't compare to that of traditional phone lines, but the cost was so much lower that it offered a superior solution for much of the telephone market.