So what’s a product manager supposed to do when your biggest product has  been discontinued? 

This is the challenge that was facing the Airbus  product managers. The company had been building the massive A380  airplane that they had created in order to compete with Boeing’s 747  airplane. However, the market for that type of aircraft dried up and  went away. When this happened Airbus was left with an airplane, but no market for it.  This caused the Airbus product managers to have to change their product development definition and go back to their drawing boards and come up with a new plan.  

What they needed to do was figure out how Airbus could continue to grow  and be successful when they no longer had their premier product to  offer.

Think about your favorite non-water drink right now. 

What color is it?  When you pour it into a glass, it looks the way that it should – you can  recognize it. In fact, when you drink it, it probably tastes the way  that it looks. What if all of this could be changed. What if your favorite drink suddenly became clear?  No, the taste would not be changed at all, it would just all of sudden  look like water. Would you still want it? 

Some product managers are  betting that you would say yes.

It almost goes without saying that we all know about Amazon – the book  seller who has turned into the seller of just about everything. 

What you  may not know about Amazon is that they decided a while back to that they were going to enter into the lucrative video gaming market.  With the power of Amazon behind you, you’d think that there was no way  that they could ever not be successful. However, so far things have not  gone the way that the Amazon product managers had wanted it to go. 

What are they going to have to do to turn their product development  definition around?

In order to make sure that people want to buy their products, product managers have to stay on top of changes in the technology that people use to make payments. 

This used to be fairly easy: once upon a time everyone used cash, then they migrated to using credit and debit cards, next came PayPal and the like. Over in China product managers are once again moving forward in the area of payments and they are making changes to their product development definition. 

Chinese product managers are trying to get people to put their mobile phones away and make payments using facial recognition systems. 

What a wonderful time we are living in! 

With the arrival of the  internet, all of sudden there is no longer a reason for any of us to  have to go out to a restaurant any more. Instead, all we have to do is  to bring up one of those online ordering applications, select what we  want, and then greet the driver when they show up at our front door.  What could be better? 

Unfortunately, what product managers are starting  to discover is that the brave new world of unlimited food delivery comes with some downsides.

If you were a product manager at Walmart’s Sam’s Club,  there is one thing that would keep you up at night: Costco. 

You’d know  that your product development definition was broken because the  customers that you wanted to come into your Sam’s Club stores all too  often were heading over to shop at Costco. The people that you needed to  be shopping in your store were well-to-do shoppers who would be willing  to spend a lot at your store. However, the people that you were getting  were the Walmart customers who traditionally were seeking bargains. This is not going to look good on anyone’s product manager resume. The well-to-do shoppers were all heading over to Costco. 

What’s a product manager to do?

At the end of a long day, many people like to go home and spend the evening losing themselves in playing video games on their home entertainment systems.

Games for these systems have grown  into a big business. In the past, when these people were away from  home, they couldn’t play their games. However, that is now starting to  change. Videogame product managers are starting extend their product development definition and bring more  of their complex, graphics-intense hits for consoles and high-end  computers to mobile devices. 

How can game product managers be successful  doing this?

You would think that being a product manager for a hot new start-up  beverage would be a great job, right? 

Somewhat surprisingly, you’d be  wrong. It turns out that it’s fairly easy to come up with the idea for a  new beverage – it it has health benefits then it is ever easier, but it  is then hard to be a product manager that is able to figure out the  product development definition that will get your new drink beverage to  catch on. This market is littered with the remains of companies  that showed up and then just faded away. 

What does a product manager  have to do in order to make their new drink product a success?

There is no question that Amazon is a successful company. 

If you were a  product manager who worked at Amazon you would be under a great deal of  pressure to find ways for the company to make more money. One way that  they would like to bring in more revenue is to start to sell high end  products. 

It turns out that this is harder than it may have originally  looked to them…

When you think about all of the products that product managers are  responsible for, there are a number of them that come to mind as being “difficult” products to successfully manage.  

For one reason or another, these products are difficult to talk about  and therefore are difficult to market. In this category go condoms,  guns, doughnuts, and, of course, cigarettes.  However, there is a new product on the market that probably belongs in  this category but it’s so new that nobody is really sure yet. 

I’m  talking about e-cigarettes and product manager’s plans to expand their product development definition and market them using social media.