Defining the business context

Companies strive to be as profitable as possible. Simply put, profits are any funds left after the company paid off all its obligations. Profits compensate employees and shareholders, attract new investors, and fuel investments in new products, which, if successful, would generate more profits, and so the cycle repeats. Without profits, companies shut down.

The question, "How will our product(s) make us profitable?" is the generic survival challenge shared by all companies, regardless of size, industry, or product. The business context of each company, however, is unique, and so is its impact of the product experience strategy.

Suppose that you are the CEO of a small unknown company, which is similar to Pure Digital, the maker of the Flip, and suppose that you want to take advantage of cheap memory cards to create a tapeless camcorder. Here are a couple of options for a product approach:

• Create a camcorder that has all the features of a tape-based camcorder, including...