 Hey, I'm Jonathan Courtney from AJ&Smart and today I'm going to talk all about product strategy. So product strategy is one of those weird things that's kind of difficult to define and lots of different companies have lots of different definitions of what a product strategy actually does. But since I've been pretty much a product strategist for the last seven years here at AJ&Smart and since we offer product strategy as like part of what we do, we've tried to kind of lock it down and nail down what product strategy is, however it's still a little bit blurry. So to help you out, I'm going to just sort of tell you what we think product strategy is and what I think a relatively good industry definition is, then we can go a little bit deeper into what a couple of different definitions are just to give you some clarity on what product strategy is. So for me, a product strategist understands the user needs, the market, and the business goals of the product that they're working on. So it's not just a person who understands, okay, this is how usability works or I know how to design a UI. They also know what the big picture of what the company is going towards and what the business goals are. They understand the market that they're working in, right? If it's Uber, they understand the automotive market. They understand really the full picture of the product world and the product that they're working on. So there's someone who's able to really understand all sides of the product. Now, another way to look at it is a product strategist can see the big picture but also knows how to prioritize small tasks. So a product strategist can say, okay, this is where we're going and these are the little things that we're going to need to do to get in that direction. Now let's have a look at a couple of ways to visualize how that might look. So here's a great visualization from Vince Law. He wrote a great article called WTF is Strategy, which we'll link down in the description. And in this article, he shows essentially where strategy fits into the whole product cycle. So you can see the mission and vision of the company. So that's where the company wants to go. And then at the bottom, you see sort of more like the actual executionary tasks. So what are the roadmaps? What's the actual things that we're going to do? And the product strategist sort of sits in between coordinating these two things. You can see that as well here. This is from a great video from Dan Olson. And I just kind of like took a really bad screenshot of it. But I found this really interesting. You see at the bottom, so you have the market and you have the product. So if your target customer, your underserved needs, then you have the product market fit. So if you have the thing that actually, you know, is the product that these people want, and if the value proposition, the feature set and the UX work that has to happen and the product strategy and the product strategist sort of lives there on the value proposition side, Melissa Perry created a canvas so that you can sort of ride out almost like what your product strategy is in this canvas. We'll also link that down below. Here's an example product strategy canvas for Uber. So in 10 years, Uber will be the cheapest alternative to owning a car or taking public transportation, the challenge. And so you can see like the, it breaks it down into the vision, the challenge, the target condition and the current state. And it's just to show you that a product strategist needs to be able to look at this canvas and understand the whole picture. So a product strategist is not saying, oh, hey, let's add this feature in here because I think that's a cool feature. A product strategist is looking at the business goals, you know, even speaking to the CEO and trying to figure out, okay, so that's where we're trying to go. These are the business goals. Here's what I'm going to get the product team to do, right? They're the person really orchestrating what the product team is actually getting done. It's also something that many companies, a product manager will do, but a product strategist is almost like a combination of a product manager and a strategist, someone who can actually figure out which way are we going, what is it that we're doing? And a product manager is mostly in most companies, someone who's more executing the actual tasks themselves. Let me give you some really great resources. I would definitely recommend reading the book Blue Ocean Strategy. It's a great way to just look at what is strategy. There's a couple of frameworks in here, a couple of nice ways to kind of figure out how to kind of nail down a company strategy, not specifically about product strategy, but a lot of the things you'll learn in here you'll be able to apply to understanding product strategy. I would definitely recommend checking out the website Stratechery by Ben Thompson. I have it up on the screen here. Stratechery is a fantastic website which goes into really the big picture, market and product strategy for some of the biggest tech companies in the world. I really can only recommend reading this. I can definitely recommend getting his newsletter as well. It's a strategic breakdown of some of the biggest tech companies in the world. Reading this always keeps me up to date in the whole product strategy world, and I think it's a fantastic, great newsletter as well. He also has a great podcast called Exponent with another guy. I can't remember the other guy's name, but this is a really great way. I listen to this every week, and it's just a great way to have these strategic thoughts and minds. You're not just looking at a product and you're like, oh, okay, Instagram added these new things. You have the strategic reasoning behind it if you listen to a podcast like that, or if you're getting into this sort of strategic thinking. And finally, I would always recommend listening to the Product Breakfast Club podcast. It is the podcast that myself and Jake Knapp, the guy who wrote Sprint, release every Monday, and a lot of it is about product strategy. A lot of it is just a load of bull as well, but I hope you do enjoy it. So again, just a really, really quick overview on what product strategy is, and just to reiterate my earlier point, a product strategist is really someone who understands the user needs, the market, so what's the market that they're in, and the business goals. So you have to have these three things to be a product strategist, and these are the three keys to understanding product strategy for any product that you see on the market. And over the next few weeks, we're going to release a couple of videos looking at case studies of companies like Facebook or Twitter, etc., etc. We're going to look into some product strategies that they've implemented by just looking at the product and saying, okay, what was the strategy behind that? But let us know what you want to know about product strategy. Again, this is our first video, just a quickie. If you have any questions about product strategy, what should we answer? Like, do you want to see what a product strategy workshop looks like? What is it that you find interesting about product strategy? Let us know what you think about it. Give it a like and a comment. And of course, give it a little baby subscribe. Thanks so much. Bye-bye. I should run in as a... How does that actually look? And today, I'm going to talk about product strategy. Woo-hoo! Go you a little bit, what? Oh, f**k, you know what? I haven't looked. Product strategist, haha! I'm going to be speaking with him at a conference in Dublin this April. So from Dan... Leave that in. Danny! Here's a great visual release. Here's a great visual release. BLEEEE!