 Hi, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, depending on the time zone where you're joining this webinar. I'm pleased to welcome you for this webinar on product growth strategy powered by ecosystems. And I am very thankful to Product School as well for giving me this opportunity to connect with you through this webinar. Once again, this Prasad here. I'm a senior product leader with AWS. So today, we are going to dive deep, taking a look at what are the options and avenues available for each of you as a product manager to grow and scale your products. So let's take a look at the agenda before we dive into the contents. We will begin with looking at the product growth curve, which some of you would be familiar with. But we will demystify some of the pitfalls that a typical product faces when they are going through this maturity journey. And from there, we will dive deep into digital ecosystems. We will understand what digital ecosystem means, what the market potential for such a digital ecosystem exists. And then we will dive deep into a few practical examples of what we see around within businesses as digital ecosystems. We will cover a few examples from existing industries who are incumbents and also a few digital disruptors who have emerged within ecosystems. And that should lead us into an interesting summary of what are the ecosystem patterns, business model patterns that we see in the industry today. And with that, we will wrap up on a few of the key takeaways that each of you as a product manager can take home and start looking at how to enhance and improve your product growth strategy. Having said that, now let's move on to the product growth curve slide here. As a product manager, each one of you would have lived through this product growth curve in one form or the other, isn't it? The product growth lifecycle begins with the initial conception of the product, identifying what the unmet need of the customer is and then also designing, developing and launching the product into the market. And then the launch product goes through a iteration of product growth, propel based on the customer needs, customer base, geographical expansion, and also enhance product features. And as you see in this chart, the next phase in the product maturity or the product growth is product maturity. And as per Forbes research, almost 85% of the products tend to fall down this curve, and then they start declining from there. The star mark that you see in this chart shows that crucial inflection point. I personally dive deep on this Forbes research to understand what's causing this downturn, what's causing these products to decline from the peak here. There were a few interesting findings. Number one, the products tend to fade away or move far away from what the customer needs are. And second, the customer needs are also changing day by day and the products are not keeping pace with the actual customer needs. So that is a gap between what customer need and then what product can offer. So that creates this downturn and the products value proposition doubles down. But you as a product manager are in a very, very unique spot to reimagine your product features, create market differentiation and move the product up in the curve and prevent the downfall. I'm sure you will be very excited to learn about what those tips and tricks are and how do you add the product growth from this curve and move the product up in the pendulum. So the next few minutes, I'm going to walk you through certain practical examples through which you can create product differentiation through digital ecosystem and more essentially, how you could create product growth strategies by looking beyond your traditional organization boundaries. It could be your enterprise driven boundaries or your industry driven boundaries or at the bottom line, it could be any boundary within your product that it operates. And to enable further in your thinking and to inspire with some examples, we will also look at what customers are looking for and how does it relate to your digital ecosystems and products. So with that, let's now look at what's changing with our customer demand. So change is the only constant, isn't it? This applies to customer sentiments as well and their needs. Customers are now looking for an integrated, holistic and personalized experience across their needs. The emphasis here is on the word integrator. So customers are looking at integrated experience cutting across the boundaries between organizations and industries. There are several examples to quote, but let's take a very practical example of one of us, maybe you or me looking to buy an house. What would be the experience that we would like to envisage? As a customer who is looking to buy an house, we would be looking for an experience that is more integrated and seamless, beginning from the house search with a realtor and then moving into the mortgage application with your financial institution or with the bank and then also connecting you as a customer with all of the players who are involved in this house purchase. It could be the home improvement agencies, it could be the title agency, it could be the insurance agency or it could be your movers who would help you to move into your new house. As a customer, you are looking at an integrated experience across the whole value chain and you are not worried about the products which are offered in silo. You are more focused on the integrated and orchestrated personalized experience across this value chain. So that's the ecosystem that we are talking about. That's the breaking of boundaries, that's the blurring of boundaries between organizations that we are talking about. Traditionally, when you look at products within this housing domain, they are pretty specialized. There are great products which helps you to search and find houses. There are great products which helps you to navigate the mortgage process with your financial institution and there are isolated products which helps you to fulfill your insurance need, thereby move into the house and do what not. But these products are not fully integrated to offer a holistic experience for the customer. And that's what this chart talks about. This chart is a snippet from a McKinsey study covering a market potential for such digital ecosystems. The ecosystem market is bound to grow to about 70 trillion by 2030. It is not too far from today. And if the product companies and organizations need to capitalize on that, they need to think differently. They need to think away from the traditional mindset of owning everything within the product, but moving towards a more an ecosystem-driven approach by forming new partnerships, building new ecosystems and launching new platforms and marketplaces, connecting all the ecosystem players together. So we spoke a lot in the last few minutes, but the key takeaway from here in this chart is a holistic integrated experience is what the customer is looking at, blurring the sectoral boundaries, and that drives into the ecosystem economy. And that's what I want you as a product manager to remember when you look at your product value proposition. So with that, now let's look at a few examples, more practical examples on how these ecosystems come into reality. Ecosystem-based approach is not new today. It's been there for a while. We have seen both successes and failures that the firms have encountered in the same ecosystem journey. Many organizations, both existing, new entrants, disruptors have launched ecosystem products. When you zoom out and look at those ecosystem products, there are three predominant archetypes or patterns that evolve out of that. The first and foremost pattern is an ecosystem that's being built from scratch. A new entrant, for example, coming in, disrupting the whole value chain, disrupting the existing incumbents or the enterprise within that particular industry. The second pattern is about an incumbent, an existing player, who is strengthening its core value proposition, core product value proposition through ecosystem strategy and partnerships. The third pattern that I could call and recall in the situation is where the incumbent is entering into a new domain. It could be adjacent to the core domain or it could be totally different from the core domain and they are building the value proposition around it. So to sum it up, there are three patterns. Number one, a new entrant coming in and disrupting. And number two, an existing incumbent player strengthening their core value proposition in their current domain and the third is an incumbent organization entering into a new segment or a new domain and building a new value proposition. I'm sure these three patterns would be creating lots of triggers in your mind and you might be associating your own known enterprises, known products and who play into that segment. The next few minutes, I'm going to walk you through examples on each of these categories and we will look at what are the key takeaways from those organizations who have come through the journey. What went well and what didn't go well. So that's the next journey in this webinar. So now we are going to look at the first archetype or the first pattern. So the first pattern is about new entrant disrupting the incumbency or the incumbent players. So I'm sure this pattern resonates with all of us and we have seen quite a lot of prominent ones here. It could be Airbnb, it could be Ubers of the world, it could be Stripe in the payment world and also lots in the B2B segment, business to B segment. We see lots of disruption happening in B2B segment. To quote a few, it could be the industrial cloud, it could be market parts for parts marketplace. But with interest of time, we are going to look at one example. And that is and financial from the financial services industry. So when you turn back in the pages and look at what happened with the and financial, they started in 2014 as a simple payment platform. And from there on, building on the payment capabilities and financial grew into a lending platform and they were pretty focused on small businesses and individuals. And from there on, they expanded their offering to involve cross-border remittance, which means they are now available more internationally beyond their original geography of operations. And between 2014 and 2020, in six years, they developed super apps covering almost soup to nuts of the financial offering. And now, as recently as in late 2022, and financial also expanded their footprint and they expanded into digital wholesale banking as well. I know this journey is impressive. They would have disrupted lots of financial firms and created a new history or a new landmark that others to follow and to be inspired with. But now let's take a few minutes to understand what made and financial success. There are three things that I would like to call out. First and foremost, and financial was intentional in expanding into adjacent ecosystems. While they started with payments, they looked at other adjacent ecosystems, such as insurance, mortgage, wealth management, and a few others to serve the customer into them. They understood the customer need that it's not going to be restricted with just payment. And they looked at options and getting into adjacent ecosystem to serve the customer better. That's the first key takeaway. The second key takeaway or reflection from here is and financial built few partnerships to offer services to their customer. And financials didn't just go down the path of doing it everything by themselves. Rather, they took a step forward they chose to become an orchestrator or a facilitator so that they are not owning everything for their end customer, but they are becoming a conduit to bring various other partners as well to serve for the customer. So the key takeaway now here is the partnership aspect. And last but not the least, over a period of time, by virtue of value, by virtue of services that and financial provided to the customers, the scale increased, the scale increased from the aspect of both the partners as well as users and customers on the platform. There are about 2000 plus partners and over 700 million users using this platform. So by virtue of the scale, automatically, there is a network effects which gets triggered and that exponentially enhances the value proposition and usage of the platform. So to summarize the quick reflections here, our number one are looking into adjacent ecosystems. Number two, forming partnerships and not owning everything and providing all services to the customer. And third is scaling over a period of time and driving network effects. So that's the first pattern when we look at new entrant coming into an industry and disrupting incumbents. And now let's move on to the second pattern, the second arch type that we have, which is about an incumbent strengthening its core value proposition. The incumbent realizes the need for driving digital ecosystem and strengthening the product value proposition accordingly. So again, in this category, we have quite a lot of examples. We have Pfizer from pharma life sciences, we have Volkswagen from automotive, we have Carrier from manufacturing and each of them have built their own ecosystems to address the end customer need in both B2C, business to consumer and B2B, business to business environments. In this chart now, we will look at Pfizer in specific analogy. So Pfizer was very intentional in creating a co-innovation network within the healthcare ecosystem. They brought together the healthcare providers, the caregivers, pharmacies and the other life sciences companies, quote unquote called as cooperative competition, to solve the common problem around health and wellness. Pfizer was intentional in building this partnership because they realized sooner than later that their independent solutions in the value chain of drug discovery is not going to help the customer holistically. But there lies a massive opportunity if Pfizer can orchestrate an ecosystem or a collaboration across all the healthcare players to solve for a common problem. So Pfizer embarked on this journey and they built a Care Insights platform with other ecosystem players and Pfizer orchestrated this and they aggregated all the capabilities from all the ecosystem players like other pharma companies as well as healthcare providers and caregivers and amplified the value proposition of the platform. So this not only differentiated Pfizer with their value proposition but also strengthened their customer base. So Pfizer was able to accelerate their customer base and also drive with market differentiation. So this is an example where an established business firm moved into an ecosystem partnerships to drive value proposition and enhance their product leadership. And now let's move on to the third pattern which is also about an incumbent. But the distinction here is the incumbent formed ecosystem partnerships to move into a newer domain to move into a newer segment. So again as in other two patterns we have quite a few examples here. We have Verizon from communications and telecom industry. We have Infor from your software as a service product industry. And then there are quite a few financial institutions now emerging with the power of embedded finance where they are trying to use embedded finance as a foundation block to enter into different industry. Now let's look at Verizon as a case in point here. Verizon leveraged their 5G capability as a launch pad to build specific industry solutions. Verizon differentiated its commodity 5G services by contextualizing what it means to each of these industries and co-build solutions with the respective industry organizations instead of building everything by themselves. So again the key here is leveraging the core value proposition which is the connectivity through 5G and then partnering with other industry firms to build contextual solutions for each of those industries. It could be smart homes, it could be smart cities, it could be industrials, industry 4.0, smart manufacturing, entertainment and as recently as announced a partnership with NFL. So Verizon used the 5G offering to build partnerships, create industry solutions, get into new segments and more importantly create a natural extension of newer monetization opportunities. So this example sums up how to create product differentiation within an incumbent through partnerships, creating newer ecosystem and moving into newer segments which the incumbent couldn't have done by just relying on their core value proposition and doing it everything by themselves. So that sums up all the three patterns that we spoke and the examples for each one of them. And now as you hear from me through these three patterns you would have seen certain commonalities, certain common denominator across all these three transformations. So let's look at it and see what they are. Number one across the three examples be it and financial or Pfizer or Verizon, the traditional sectorial industry boundaries continue to blur and financial expanded its footprint beyond their payment 14. Pfizer expanded their footprint beyond their enterprise, they formed partnerships with the healthcare ecosystem and Verizon went above and beyond their communication industry. So organizations have gone beyond their traditional limit to offer end to end experience for the customer. So the key here is going outside your boundary to offer end to end customer experience. So that's the first commonality. The second point that I would like to amplify here is around moving away from the traditional inward centric ownership approach into a more federated centric aggregation order facilitation model. So what I mean by that is traditionally every firm, every organization have been cautious about doing everything internally by themselves, creating a product, having services offered through the product, everything powered by their core values and services. But in all the three examples that we just saw and the archetypes that we saw, the commonality lies in how the partnerships came into play to help facilitate partner solutions through each one of the firms or other products. So the key here is forming partnerships, moving away from the traditional ownership based model into a facilitation model. The third thing that I would like to sum up last but not the least is on the network effects. So over a period of time, as you launch these ecosystem based products and platforms, each partner in the ecosystem gets the benefit of participating in the ecosystem or in the platform because they get to have access to the consumer or the customer and then they also get value in terms of monetization and also a few other business benefits. So hence, there is a motivation for more partners to join your ecosystem. The more partners, the better for the customers. The more the customer, the better for the partners and yourself as the owner of the product. So this creates a virtuous flywheel and network effects which you cannot stop. And that's the snowball effect that the ecosystem business models can drive for you. So to sum it up, moving beyond your traditional boundaries, thinking customer experience into events. Second, focus on partnerships, moving away from ownership based model into a federated model. And third, driving the flywheel effect through partnerships and scaling. So with that, let's move on to the key segment of the webinar where I would like to give you some practical tidbits as a product manager, what you can do and what you can focus in your role to help grow your product. So first and foremost, my recommendation to you as a product manager is dive deep and spend time in understanding your customers' true unmet needs. What the unmet needs are and also drive some data points towards why it is not met today. Second, be more holistic, right? Tracking the entire end-to-end customer journey, looking at the pain point from an end-to-end customer journey and not restricting yourself to a portion of it or a snippet of the customer journey just because your product is operating in that snippet or in that part. Be more holistic, have a broader bird's-eye view on the end-to-end customer journey and map your customer needs accordingly to it. Third is my recommendation is to think big, identify opportunities that can offer integrated experience to your customer. Breaking the traditional boundaries. While your product or your organization might be specializing in a specific offering, specific solution, but if the end-to-end value chain analysis or the customer journey analysis and their unmet needs drive to a point of breaking those boundaries and breaking the traditional intersection to offer an integrated experience, that's the thing big idea that you need to propel yourself with. Finally, look at all these data points that you gathered from all the first three, your customer unmet needs, your end-to-end customer journey, and then the thing big opportunity with integrated experience to identify what new partnerships or a facilitation model that you can bring to your product. You might wonder, as you hear through this, that if you as a product manager can solely drive this growth strategy with ecosystems. Definitely, you need involvement support from your senior leadership, your organization, even your sales marketing teams. But you can be the change agent because you are the CEO of your product. You own the product value proposition. You drive the product features and the roadmap. So with that foundation, you can be the change agent to challenge the status quo and also to look at what options are available to charter a new growth path for your product. I hope this webinar would have given you a brief introduction to the ecosystem strategy. You might have a few more questions or topics to discuss for sure. If so, please don't hesitate to reach out to me through LinkedIn. I'm very happy to connect with you and chat with you. Thanks again for tuning into this webinar and have a great day. Thanks, everyone.