5 Ways a Product Development Strategy Can Drive Your Business Goals
In this article:
What Is a Product Development Strategy?
How a Product Development Strategy Drives Business Goals
Examples of Product Development Strategies
Why a Product Development Strategy Matters
Products move through a lifecycle, from blue-sky ideas to live apps that reach millions. Every stage matters, and the smartest teams approach each one with purpose.
At Big Human, we see a product development strategy as more than a roadmap for launch. It’s the framework that balances creative ideation with disciplined execution, keeping customer needs front and center.
"Great ideas are the easy part. What’s hard is having the determination and will to execute your vision,” Andrew Tejerina, Big Human’s Director of Product, said. “Having a strong product development strategy can give you the framework to keep things on task when you hit roadblocks, or the logical basis to pivot if you lose sight of user needs and business value."
Whether you’re introducing a new product to an existing market, expanding an existing product into new markets, or refining your product offerings, a clear strategy sets you up for success. We embed this approach in every project to make sure creativity scales into measurable results.
Product development is our bread and butter at Big Human; we’ve helped brands like Rockefeller Center, Quinn, and Lumiere transform concepts into fully realized products. To help you do the same, we’re breaking down the five ways a product development strategy can set you up for success.
What Is a Product Development Strategy?
A product development strategy is your roadmap for turning a product vision into a full-fledged, successful product. It gives development teams a structured framework to test, iterate, and launch products that capture market share and resonate with real users — a methodology we refine on every Big Human project to ensure strategy and product design work in tandem.
Rooted in market research and customer feedback, this methodology makes sure your product roadmap matches your business goals, helping you meet customer needs, stay competitive in an existing market, or thrive in new markets. For your strategy to work, every step should be intentional, measurable, and focused on long-term growth.
How a Product Development Strategy Drives Business Goals
Now that we’ve defined what a product development strategy is, let’s dive into the key ways it can power your business goals — from brainstorming with your product team to uncovering new opportunities and gaining a competitive advantage.
Align Product Teams Around One Vision
Building a successful product takes a coordinated team. Product managers, strategists, designers, developers, and marketers each bring unique priorities, workflows, and perspectives. Any misalignment can slow down the process and impact your business goals.
At Big Human, alignment isn’t just about process; it’s about connecting strategy, design, and engineering so every decision drives impact. By following a shared product development strategy, your team knows where to invest resources, which features to prioritize, and how to stay in sync. This synchronization allows your team to move faster, make informed decisions, build with confidence, and keep the user experience at the forefront.
Replace Guesswork with Real Data
Relying on intuition alone is risky. To bridge instinct and intellect, we combine market research and customer feedback with hands-on prototyping. This approach lets our teams validate ideas quickly, iterate based on real insights, and ensure every feature aligns with both user needs and business outcomes long before launch. When research and feedback drive the product development process, you waste less time and boost your chances of success.
Spot Opportunities to Evolve
Even the most successful products hit a slowdown. When an existing product stops driving growth, a clear strategy helps your product team analyze performance and track key metrics to understand what’s working and what’s not. This might mean enhancing functionality, adding new features, refining the user experience, or even adjusting the price.
Continuous iteration is core to our process. It’s how we spot opportunities, mitigate risk, and evolve products that keep pace with users and markets. Listening to customer feedback and focusing on ongoing iterations amplify your product's impact while aligning it with long-term business goals.
Expand Into New Markets
Markets move fast. Your business strategy should leverage market research and customer feedback to uncover gaps, emerging trends, and unmet customer needs. With the right insights, your product team can explore new markets, expand your product line, or launch new product ideas that better serve your target audience. Whether it’s a new product or an existing one, staying proactive helps capture market share and even attract new customers.
Tip: Follow a structured process with clear product development stages to test and refine your concept before launch.
Stay Ahead of the Competition
A product development strategy does more than just help you launch; it gives your team the insights to improve functionality, add new features, and refine your offerings for continued success. By integrating user feedback and competitive analysis throughout the product development lifecycle, we ensure products not only meet expectations but consistently stay a step ahead.
By constantly iterating throughout the product development lifecycle, you can build successful products that meet customer needs and boost retention. Enhancing your current product or expanding your product line strategically positions your business to capture market share and stay ahead of competitors.
Examples of Leading Product Development Strategies
Different companies approach product development in different ways. These three brands show how a product development strategy can drive real results.
Salesforce: Innovation-Driven Scalability
“Innovation” gets thrown around a lot, but real innovation happens when you identify a novel solution to a weighty problem. Salesforce’s innovation-driven approach focuses on creating untapped value that solves customer pain points and user needs.
Regularly ranked The World’s #1 Most Innovative Company by Forbes, Salesforce tackles every idea as if it’s the first time. In 2020, the company built a new product line to help people safely return to the office during the pandemic. Salesforce’s team did it in just eight weeks — a lightning-fast turnaround in product development.
Netflix: Consumer-Driven Testing and Iteration
Netflix is one of the best examples of a consumer-driven approach, directly syncing its product offerings with user feedback and personalization. Streaming since 2007, the platform consistently anticipates market needs and delivers content tailored to viewer preferences — often before users even realize what they want.
Personalization isn’t just content suggestions. Algorithms rank, organize, and pair content with thoughtfully curated imagery to create a customized user experience that fuels retention, the platform’s key metric.
Microsoft: Platform-Driven, Full Ecosystem Thinking
Microsoft’s platform-driven strategy helped the tech giant evolve from a simple programming language to a multi-industry empire. Today, it connects users to countless apps, add-ins, and third-party services like LinkedIn and GitHub. By continually expanding its ecosystem, Microsoft is able to deliver products to a broader target market, generating multiple revenue streams.
Big Human Takeaway: We apply these lessons (and more) to every project — balancing innovation, iteration, and scalability to create products that resonate with users and drive measurable business results.
Why a Product Development Strategy Matters
A smart product development strategy transforms ideas into insights and insights into impact. It aligns teams, reduces risk, and builds momentum at scale. No matter where you are in the product development lifecycle, Big Human helps you move with purpose — from insight to launch.
Big ideas need robust product development strategies. Get in touch to see how we can help bring yours to life.
