Inside SEP: Product Strategy And Innovation

In this episode, our guests are Chris Shinkle and Mike Cronin from SEP to discuss how the company approaches product strategy engagements with clients. They explain SEP’s philosophy of clarifying the problem, defining a guiding policy, and outlining coherent actions – going beyond just creating a PowerPoint strategy deck. Chris and Mike share examples of helping clients align stakeholders, refine roadmaps to reflect the true strategy, and rapidly validate technical feasibility through prototyping. They emphasize the importance of a roadmap as a “prototype of strategy” and a starting point for productive strategy conversations. Some key points:

• Many clients come to SEP with a broad idea or goal for a product, but lack clarity on the specific challenge, approach, and steps needed to execute successfully
• A major differentiator for SEP is rapidly validating the technical feasibility of the roadmap through prototyping and proof-of-concepts, giving clients confidence in their ability to deliver the strategy
• Product strategy involves understanding the problem to be solved, having a guiding policy on how to approach it, and defining a coherent set of actions to take