What’s Wrong with Twitter’s Strategy?
Despite Twitter’s social and political influence, the business has languished. It has struggled to make a profit and the stock price has gone virtually nowhere in 10 years.
The problem: It’s a classic case of a “technology solution looking for a market.” Yet, Twitter is not alone. Many companies have great capabilities that are not monetized well.
Most companies don’t lack creativity or ideas; they lack focus. They lack clarity about where the market is under-served, where the opportunities lie. Is that you?
The solution:
1) Because Twitter is selling the use of its platform, and because its platform is being used to get dozens (maybe hundreds) of different functional, emotional, and social jobs done, Twitter must start by discovering all the jobs its users are trying to get done on the platform.
All of these jobs are discoverable if you ask customers what they want to accomplish rather than asking them for product or service specifications.
Note: although this challenge – i.e., to help customers get numerous jobs done with your platform – is different from the challenge many other companies face which is to help their customers “get a core job done” with a discrete product/service, the process of creating new value is the same. To create compelling new value, find compelling unmet needs.
2) Once all of the jobs to be done have been captured, they can then be deployed to a representative sample of customers in a web-based survey to be rated for importance and satisfaction. Those jobs that are rated as important to get done but unsatisfied today given current options are opportunities for new value creation. The more important and less satisfied a job is, the greater the opportunity for new value creation it presents.
Obtaining these ratings enables management to identify and rank all the opportunities in their market. This approach works for any organization that has valuable capabilities but isn’t sure how to monetize them.
3) Then evaluate and select the opportunities that are most attractive to pursue for new value creation based on how well you think you can address them and win in the market.
4) Finally, devise solution ideas that address the selected opportunities. At this point in the process, because you have already identified and validated the opportunities in the market, and then evaluated and selected those opportunities that are the most attractive to pursue, now you can generate ideas with great clarity and confidence about where to focus and what to do. This is how Twitter (or any company with a platform of capabilities to sell) can engineer a valued and unique position in the market.
Reveal needs. Create value. Drive growth. Let me show you how (uw@revealgrowth.com).
