What do Chocolate Chip Cookies have in Common with a Product Launch?

Image Source: Joy Food Sunshine

I'm a big believer in having launch plays as a starting point for develop a product launch strategy. You probably have a few yourself, whether you realize it or not.

A launch play is a predetermined set of actions and required resources you need to produce the launch outcome you want. I use the Launch Objectives Worksheet as the tool to help me arrive at the outcome I want. But what if a launch play isn't the best fit? What if you need a new launch play?

I want to share with you how I think through and arrive at a launch strategy. Actually, I do this every time regardless of whether I started with a launch play or not.

It starts with a metaphor. I love metaphors because I can visualize the outcome. The metaphor I use is a recipe. Yes, a recipe as in cooking something.

Here's how I view it. The thing we get as a result of following a recipe is an outcome, like chocolate chip cookies. So in this imaginary product launch our launch objective is to make delicious chocolate chip cookies.

What will we need to make the chocolate chip cookies? We will need ingredients. We will need flour, brown sugar, butter, eggs, baking soda, baking powder, salt and chocolate chips. Much like in this recipe, we need ingredients to be successful. Your product launch needs ingredients to. Think of those ingredients as market knowledge and a set of operational capabilities.

Source: Joy Food Sunshine

We also need equipment to bake delicious our yummy chocolate chip cookies, just like our product launch needs equipment.

We will need instructions on how to prepare and bake the cookies, right? This is just the same way a product launch needs a methodology to assemble the ingredients in the proper order to produce the best outcome.

Source: Joy Food Sunshine

I don't know about you, but I am hungry about now and I hope you're getting my metaphor.

Let me break it down further.

Cookie Objectives: To serve my family a dozen delicious chocolate chip cookies tonight for a dessert. This is outcome based.

Cookie Capabilities: I look for the ingredients I need and go to the store to get the ingredients I don't have. This is analogous to identifying the capabilities you have available to leverage, and the missing capabilities you need.

Cookie Strategy: The recipe instructions are like the cross-functional coordination needed to ready every part of your organization. OK, a recipe is a little more like tactics, but it would break my metaphor, and that wouldn't be fun.