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50 Product Management Case Studies

We often wonder what kind of process other product teams have created, planned, and most importantly, how they have implemented it. That is why we at Producter have compiled 50 different case studies for you.

2 years ago   •   4 min read

We often wonder what kind of process other product teams have created, planned, and most importantly, how they have implemented it.

That is why we at Producter have compiled 50 different case studies for you.

Brought to you by Roadmape

1- Rules of Flow for Product Management: an AirBnB Case Study

“Engagement” is a term that is so overused in product management that it has almost lost its meaning. So often I’ve heard from teams, “We’ll measure the success of this test with engagement,” which could mean anything from feature click-through to bounce to we-aren’t-really-sure-this-will-drive-conversion-so-we’re-hedging-our-bet. Underneath, the reason this term has been co-opted and jargonized is that genuine, productive engagement can be ramped toward long-term customer loyalty. And loyalty pays off: a loyalty increase of 7% can boost lifetime profits per customer by as much as 85%, and a loyalty increase of 3% can correlate to a 10% cost reduction ( Brand Keys ).

2- The Psychology of Clubhouse’s User Retention (...and churn)

3- Netflix Q1 ’21 Subscriber Growth Miss: Can We Avoid Another One?

As a data analyst supporting a mobile subscription business , Netflix’s Q1 ’21 subscriber growth miss is a classic example of when I would get called for recommendations to prevent a miss in the future. I thought this would make an interesting case study to discuss my approach to finding insights to drive subscriber growth. Sadly I’m not a Netflix employee and will be limited to publicly available data but the wealth of information on the Internet about Netflix is sufficient to generate insights for this case study.

4- Amazon Go Green

As part of the Design Challenge from productdesign.tips, our team came together to find ways for Amazon to encourage more sustainability on their e-commerce platform. As with any unsolicited design project, the challenge comes with a lack of access to application analytics and technical feasibilities. Nonetheless, the question remains: How might we design checkout screens for an e-commerce app to help people recycle the goods they buy?

5- Quora Case Study – The Wonderful World of Quora

Quora has become a substantive resource for millions of entrepreneurs and one of the best sources for Business to Business market. Majorly used by writers, scholars, bloggers, investors, consultants, students this Q/A site has much to offer in terms of knowledge sharing, connection building and information gathering.

6- Building a product without any full-time product managers

Jambb is an emerging social platform where creators grow their communities by recognizing and rewarding fans for their support. Currently, creators monetize fan engagement through advertisements, merchandise, and subscriptions, to name a few. However, this only represents 1% of fans, leaving the other 99% (who contribute in non-monetary ways) without the same content, access, and recognition that they deserve.

8- What if you can create Listening Sessions on Spotify

Summary: The project was done as a part of a user experience design challenge given to me by a company. I was given the brief by them to work on a feature of Spotify and I spent around 25–30 hours on the challenge in which I went through the entire process, from the research to testing.

9- Redesigned Apple Maps and replicated an Apple product launch for it

Quick-fire question; what is the single most important and widely used feature in a phone — asides from texting and instant messaging friends, coworkers and family? Maybe you guessed right, perhaps this feature is so integrated into your life that you didn’t even think about it — either way, it is your phone’s GPS. It is reasonable to say that GPS technology has changed society’s lives in ways we never could’ve imagined. Gone are the days of using physically printed maps and almanacks, when we now have smartphones with navigation apps. Since the launch of the iPhone and the App Store, consumers have been able to use different apps for their personal navigation needs. Everyone has a preference, and apps have come out to try and address every need.

10- Intuitive design and product-led growth

In 2018, Miro was hardly a blip on the radar in the Design world. Fast forward two years, and suddenly Miro is solidly the number one tool for brainstorming and ideation.

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20 Product Management Case Studies [Detailed Analysis][2024]

In today’s fast-paced and highly competitive business environment, effective product management has never been more crucial. It is a strategic catalyst that drives innovation and shapes how companies respond to evolving market demands and consumer preferences. This article delves into product management by examining 20 diverse global case studies, each showcasing the profound impact and key learnings derived from some of the world’s most influential companies. From Apple’s groundbreaking entry into the smartphone market to Spotify’s transformation of music consumption, and Toyota’s efficiency-driven Lean Production Model, these case studies offer a panoramic view of how strategic product management can lead to revolutionary changes in various industries. The article aims to provide valuable insights into the challenges faced, solutions implemented, and the overarching effects of these strategies, revealing how companies like Airbnb, Tesla, Zoom, Slack, Samsung, Netflix, and Patagonia have not only achieved market success but also set new benchmarks and trends in their respective domains. Through this exploration, we aim to equip current and aspiring product managers and business leaders with practical knowledge and inspiration to navigate the complex landscape of product management, driving innovation and success in their ventures.

Related: How to Build a Career in Product Management?

1. Apple Inc. – Reinventing the Smartphone

Task/Conflict:

Apple’s entry into the already crowded mobile phone market was a bold move, particularly with the objective of introducing a product that wasn’t just another addition but a complete redefinition of what a mobile phone could be. The challenge was to innovate in a way that would not only capture the market’s attention but also set a new standard for user interaction, functionality, and design in the smartphone industry.

The solution lay in the development of the iPhone, a device that combined a phone, an iPod, and an internet communicator. This integration, coupled with a pioneering touchscreen interface and a focus on user experience, positioned the iPhone not just as a product but as an ecosystem. Apple’s emphasis on design, functionality, and user interface created a product that stood out from its competitors.

Overall Impact:

• Revolutionized the smartphone industry.
• Set new standards for technology and user experience.

Key Learnings:

• Innovation can disrupt established markets.
• User-centric design is crucial in technology products.

2. Spotify – Transforming Music Consumption

In an era dominated by music piracy and declining physical album sales, Spotify faced the daunting task of reshaping how people accessed and paid for music. The challenge was not only technological but also cultural, requiring a shift in consumer habits and a rethinking of the existing music industry’s business model.

Spotify’s approach was to introduce a user-friendly music streaming service, offering a vast library of tracks with both a free, ad-supported model and a premium subscription option. This strategy addressed the issues of accessibility and affordability while respecting the rights of artists and producers, thus presenting an attractive alternative to illegal downloads.

• Influenced the revenue model of the entire music industry.
• Became a leader in music streaming.
• Innovative business models can redefine industries.
• Addressing consumer pain points is key to success.

3. Toyota – The Lean Production Model

Toyota was confronted with the challenge of enhancing efficiency and reducing waste in their production processes. The automotive industry, characterized by intense competition and high operational costs, demanded a strategy that not only improved production efficiency but also maintained high quality.

Toyota implemented the Lean Production Model, a revolutionary approach focusing on ‘Kaizen’ or continuous improvement. This methodology involved streamlining the manufacturing process, reducing waste, and empowering workers to contribute to ongoing improvements. The Lean Model emphasized efficiency, flexibility, and a relentless pursuit of quality in production.

• Enhanced operational efficiency and profitability.
• Established as a benchmark for manufacturing excellence.
• Efficiency and quality are pillars of manufacturing success.
• Continuous improvement drives operational excellence.

4. Airbnb – Revolutionizing Hospitality

Airbnb aimed to carve out a new niche in the hospitality industry, which was traditionally dominated by hotels. The challenge was multifaceted, involving regulatory hurdles, building trust among users, and creating a reliable and scalable platform that connected homeowners with travelers seeking unique lodging experiences.

The solution was the creation of a user-friendly online platform that enabled homeowners to list their properties for short-term rental. This platform not only provided an alternative to traditional hotels but also fostered a sense of community and unique travel experiences. Airbnb focused on building a robust review system and transparent policies to overcome trust and safety concerns.

• Disrupted the traditional hotel industry.
• Became a leading figure in the sharing economy.
• Innovative platforms can create new market segments.
• Trust and transparency are crucial in community-driven businesses.

Related: History & Origin of Product Management

5. Tesla – Electrifying the Auto Industry

Tesla embarked on the ambitious goal of popularizing electric vehicles (EVs) as a sustainable and viable alternative to gasoline-powered cars. This task involved overcoming preconceptions about the performance, range, and practicality of EVs, as well as establishing the necessary infrastructure for their adoption.

Tesla’s approach was to develop high-performance, luxury electric vehicles that combined environmental friendliness with cutting-edge technology and stylish design. This strategy helped to change the perception of EVs from being seen as inferior alternatives to gasoline cars to desirable, high-tech vehicles. Tesla also invested in building a network of charging stations, further facilitating the practicality of EV ownership.

• Led the transition towards electric vehicle adoption.
• Influenced the auto industry’s direction towards sustainability.
• Sustainable technology can be aligned with luxury and performance.
• Changing consumer perceptions is key to introducing new technology.

6. Zoom – Simplifying Remote Communication

In a market crowded with various communication tools, Zoom faced the challenge of differentiating itself and proving its value. The goal was to provide a solution that was not only reliable and easy to use but also superior in terms of video and audio quality compared to existing offerings.

Zoom focused on creating a user-friendly platform that offered high-definition video and clear audio, even in low-bandwidth situations. This commitment to quality and reliability, combined with features like screen sharing, virtual backgrounds, and easy integration with other tools, made Zoom a preferred choice for businesses and individuals alike, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Became a staple tool for remote communication.
• Highlighted during the global shift to remote work due to the pandemic.
• Reliability and user experience are critical in technology solutions.
• Agility in adapting to market changes is vital.

7. Slack – Redefining Workplace Collaboration

Slack was developed with the vision of transforming the cluttered and inefficient landscape of workplace communication, dominated by email. The challenge was to create a platform that not only streamlined communication but also integrated various work tools to enhance productivity and collaboration.

The solution was an intuitive, chat-based platform that allowed for real-time messaging, file sharing, and integration with a wide range of work tools and applications. Slack’s focus on reducing the reliance on emails and consolidating communication into a single, searchable platform revolutionized team collaboration and internal communication in businesses.

• Changed the dynamics of team communication and collaboration.
• Became a central tool in many organizations for internal communication.
• Streamlining common practices can create significant market opportunities.
• Integration and user-friendliness are key in collaborative tools.

8. Samsung – Innovation in Electronics

Samsung’s challenge was to establish itself as a leader in the highly competitive and rapidly evolving consumer electronics market. This required keeping up with technological advancements and differentiating its products in terms of quality, innovation, and user experience.

Samsung’s strategy involved substantial investment in research and development, focusing on bringing innovative and high-quality products to the market. Their innovation commitment spanned various product categories, including smartphones, televisions, and home appliances. This focus on quality and technological advancement helped Samsung achieve a leading position in the global electronics market.

• Achieved a leading position in the consumer electronics market.
• Known for innovation and quality in product offerings.
• Innovation is crucial in technology sectors.
• Quality and continuous improvement attract consumer loyalty.

Related: Top Product Management Tools

9. Netflix – Pioneering Streaming Services

Netflix’s journey began with the goal of transforming the traditional movie rental business. The challenge was to transition from a DVD rental service to an online streaming platform, requiring a technological shift and a change in consumer viewing habits and content distribution models.

The solution was a gradual but determined shift to an online streaming model, offering customers an extensive and ever-growing library of movies and TV shows. Netflix’s investment in original content and exclusive deals with production studios further enhanced their appeal. This strategic pivot catered to the growing demand for on-demand entertainment, free from physical media and broadcast schedules constraints.

• Redefined media consumption habits.
• Led the rise of online streaming services.
• Adaptability to technology and market trends is critical.
• Investing in original content can differentiate streaming services.

10. Patagonia – Ethical Product Management

In a clothing industry often criticized for environmental and ethical issues, Patagonia aimed to differentiate itself by committing to sustainability and ethical practices. The challenge was not only to maintain profitability but also to influence consumer behavior and industry standards towards more responsible practices.

Patagonia’s approach included using sustainable materials, ensuring transparency in their supply chain, and advocating for environmental causes. Their commitment extended to initiatives like repairing products to extend their lifespan and encouraging responsible consumption. This strategy appealed to environmentally conscious consumers and set a new standard for corporate responsibility in the clothing industry.

• Became a model for sustainability in the clothing industry.
• Influenced both consumer and industry practices towards eco-friendliness.
• Sustainability can be a unique selling proposition.
• Ethical practices enhance brand loyalty and reputation.

11. Microsoft – Shifting to Cloud Computing

Microsoft faced significant challenges in adapting to the rapidly evolving technology landscape. The traditional software model of boxed products had grown increasingly obsolete due to a surge in cloud computing. Emerging competitors like Amazon Web Services and Google’s cloud platform gained momentum, providing flexible, scalable solutions that shifted the market’s preference away from on-premise software to on-demand, subscription-based models. Microsoft needed to transform its business approach and product portfolio to align with these market trends

Under CEO Satya Nadella’s leadership, Microsoft shifted focus to cloud computing, developing Azure as an end-to-end platform providing comprehensive infrastructure and software services. The company also transitioned its flagship Office suite to a cloud-based subscription model with Office 365. They emphasized flexibility, scalability, and security while ensuring seamless integration with existing Microsoft products. Investments in data centers globally and new pricing models enabled Microsoft to compete directly with other leading cloud providers.

• Transformed Microsoft into a leader in cloud computing.
• Significantly increased recurring revenue through subscription-based services.
• Implementation of emerging technologies is vital for staying ahead of market trends.
• Subscription models can create predictable and sustainable revenue streams.

12. Lego – Rebuilding a Toy Empire

Lego was at a crossroads in the early 2000s. The company had overextended its product lines, ventured into unrelated business areas, and faced fierce competition from digital entertainment sources like video games. The result was a decline in sales and profitability, jeopardizing the company’s future and threatening the iconic brand with irrelevance.

To rebuild its brand, Lego implemented a back-to-basics approach, refocusing on its core product, the Lego brick. It also streamlined its product lines and improved internal operations. Partnering with entertainment franchises such as Star Wars and Harry Potter, they launched themed Lego sets that resonated with younger generations. Lego expanded its reach into digital media with video games and movies like The Lego Movie, engaging customers through multiple channels and breathing new life into the brand.

• Restored profitability and renewed consumer interest in Lego products.
• Expanded their presence into digital media and entertainment.
• Diversification and partnerships can revitalize traditional products.
• Engaging customers across multiple channels strengthens brand loyalty.

Related: Inspirational Product Management Quotes

13. Dropbox – User-Friendly Cloud Storage

Dropbox faced the challenge of competing with tech giants including Google and Microsoft in the nascent cloud storage market. While these companies offered vast storage solutions integrated with their productivity suites, Dropbox needed to carve out a niche by appealing to users with an easy-to-use, reliable platform. They aimed to provide seamless file synchronization, security, and accessibility across devices.

Dropbox placed simplicity at the forefront, developing a cross-platform application that allowed users to sync files effortlessly across multiple devices. The system’s seamless synchronization and ease of use differentiated it from other cloud storage providers. They employed a freemium model that offered free storage with the option to upgrade for more capacity and features, attracting millions of users globally and enabling them to monetize their growing user base.

• Became a trusted name in cloud storage, with millions of users worldwide.
• Pioneered the freemium model, offering free and paid plans.
• User experience is a differentiator in competitive tech markets.
• Freemium models can attract users and convert them to paid subscriptions.

14. Nike – Personalizing Athletic Wear

Nike, already a leader in sports apparel, faced stiff competition from rivals like Adidas and Under Armour. The company needed a unique strategy to differentiate its products and capture the loyalty of a diverse, increasingly demanding customer base. Customers wanted personalized experiences, and Nike aimed to address this by providing a solution that matched their specific preferences in athletic wear.

Nike launched the NikeID program, which allowed customers to personalize their athletic gear online, choosing colors, patterns, and custom text. This innovation expanded the company’s appeal to athletes and fashion-conscious consumers alike, helping them express their individuality while boosting engagement. By streamlining the customization process and leveraging digital technology, NikeID created an experience that could be replicated globally, resulting in increased brand loyalty and revenues.

• Elevated customer engagement through personalized experiences.
• Expanded customization to a broad range of products, increasing brand loyalty.
• Personalization can differentiate brands in competitive markets.
• Engaging customers in the design process enhances brand value.

15. Procter & Gamble – Open Innovation with Connect + Develop

Procter & Gamble (P&G), known for a vast portfolio of consumer goods, recognized that the traditional R&D process was becoming slower and costlier, hampering the company’s ability to innovate. With the proliferation of specialized knowledge worldwide, P&G realized that internal expertise alone wouldn’t suffice fulfill the increasing demand for new products across its various brands. They needed to find a way to tap into external innovation to stay ahead of the competition.

P&G launched the Connect + Develop platform, an open innovation initiative that invited inventors, academics, and other companies to submit ideas and collaborate on new products. This platform enabled P&G to access global expertise and accelerate the product development process by integrating external solutions with their own internal capabilities. The platform generated new partnerships that broadened P&G’s R&D reach and enhanced the product pipelines for various brands, significantly improving efficiency and innovation.

• Increased innovation by sourcing solutions from a global network.
• Enhanced product pipelines across multiple categories.
• Open innovation can tap into global expertise for improved R&D.
• Collaborating beyond company boundaries accelerates product development.

16. Adobe – Transforming into a Subscription Model

Adobe faced challenges with its traditional perpetual software licensing model, which was becoming outdated due to issues like piracy and inconsistent revenue streams. As competitors moved towards more dynamic, subscription-based models, Adobe needed to reinvent its business strategy to stay competitive and relevant in the digital content creation industry.

With the introduction of Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe shifted from selling boxed software to a subscription-based model. This move provided customers with constant updates, cloud storage, and access to a suite of creative tools for a monthly fee. The transition addressed piracy issues and allowed Adobe to offer a scalable and continually improving product experience, leading to a more predictable and stable revenue stream.

• Stabilized Adobe’s revenue with a predictable subscription-based income.
• Increased customer retention and satisfaction due to continuous updates and enhancements.
• Fostered a broader adoption of Adobe’s software suite among freelancers and small businesses due to more accessible pricing.
• Transitioning to a subscription model can provide stable revenue and reduce piracy.
• Offering continual improvements and added value can enhance customer loyalty.

Related: Reasons to Study Product Management

17. GoPro – Innovating in a Niche Market

GoPro aimed to dominate the action camera market but faced the challenge of distinguishing itself from larger electronics manufacturers with broader product lines. The company needed to innovate continuously while fostering a strong brand identity that resonated with extreme sports enthusiasts and casual users alike.

GoPro focused on developing durable, high-quality cameras with unique features such as waterproofing and compact design tailored to capture extreme sports and adventure. They also built a robust community by leveraging user-generated content and social media, turning their customers into brand ambassadors. This strategy solidified their market position and expanded their customer base.

• Established GoPro as the leading brand in action cameras with a significant market share.
• Expanded the brand’s appeal beyond extreme sports to general consumers.
• Fostered a new market for accessory and lifestyle products related to action cameras.
• Leveraging user-generated content can effectively enhance community engagement and marketing.
• Creating an ecosystem around a product can extend its market reach and usability.

18. IBM – Pioneering Artificial Intelligence with Watson

IBM recognized the potential of artificial intelligence early on but faced the dual challenge of developing cutting-edge technology and finding practical applications for AI in business. They needed to create a platform that could demonstrate AI’s capabilities and be applicable and beneficial across various industries.

IBM developed Watson, an AI system capable of understanding natural language and generating data-based hypotheses. Watson was first introduced to the public by participating in the quiz show Jeopardy!, where it challenged humans. Following this, IBM expanded Watson’s capabilities to serve industries like healthcare, finance, and customer service, showcasing its versatility and practical utility.

• Expanded Watson’s applications into healthcare, finance, and beyond, proving AI’s versatility in solving complex problems.
• Strengthened IBM’s brand as an innovator and thought leader in the technological space.
• Demonstrating technology through high-visibility challenges (like Jeopardy!) can effectively capture public and commercial interest.
• Strategic partnerships in diverse industries can enhance the practical applications and market acceptance of new technologies.

19. Unilever – Sustainability as a Business Strategy

Facing increasing consumer awareness and demand for sustainable and ethical products, Unilever needed to integrate sustainability deeply into its business model without compromising on profitability and market competitiveness.

Unilever launched the Sustainable Living Plan, committing to halve its environmental footprint, improve health and well-being for more than a billion people, and sustainably sourcing 100% of its agricultural raw materials. This comprehensive strategy helped Unilever strengthen its brand loyalty among conscious consumers and drove long-term growth by reducing costs and innovating in product development.

• Achieved cost reductions and efficiency improvements through sustainable practices.
• Set industry standards for sustainability, influencing other companies to adopt similar practices.
• Sustainability can drive business growth and consumer loyalty when integrated into core business strategies.
• Ethical practices can be a competitive advantage, attracting both consumers and investors.
• Transparency in sustainability efforts can enhance corporate reputation and build stronger relationships with stakeholders.

20. Zara – Revolutionizing Fashion with Fast Fashion

Zara, part of the Inditex group, needed to maintain its edge in the highly competitive and fast-paced fashion industry. The challenge was to continually offer the latest fashion trends faster than traditional retailers, addressing the consumers’ desire for immediate gratification.

Zara implemented a unique business model, fast fashion, which involves rapid prototyping, small batch production, and an extremely efficient supply chain that can bring designs from the runway to store shelves in weeks. This approach kept inventory costs low and ensured that Zara’s offerings were always fresh, appealing, and aligned with current trends.

• Enabled Zara to become a global leader in the fashion industry, significantly outpacing competitors in responsiveness to fashion trends.
• Reduced unsold inventory and increased profitability through efficient supply chain management.
• Catalyzed shifts in consumer buying behavior, with more frequent purchases and higher expectations for rapid trend availability.
• Speed and agility in product development and supply chain can significantly enhance market responsiveness.
• Continuous market research and rapid response to consumer trends are crucial for maintaining competitive advantage in fast-paced industries.

Related: Product Management Failure Examples

Closing Thoughts

In conclusion, these case studies exemplify the transformative power of effective product management. They highlight the importance of understanding market needs, embracing innovation, focusing on user experience, and the value of ethical practices. Aspiring business leaders can draw valuable lessons from these examples to navigate challenges and drive success in their endeavors.

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Product Case Studies: Examples and Best Practices for Success

Discover the power of product case studies with our comprehensive guide.

Posted May 15, 2023

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Table of Contents

Product case studies are an important tool that businesses use to showcase their products and demonstrate their value. They are especially crucial for companies that have innovative and complex products that require explanation and demonstration to potential customers. A product case study can help potential customers to understand a product's features, benefits, and the results they can expect when using it. In this article, we will explore the importance of product case studies, how to identify the right products for case studies, tips for creating compelling case studies, and best practices for promoting them.

Why Product Case Studies are Important for Businesses

Product case studies provide businesses with a platform to showcase their products in a real-life scenario and demonstrate how they solve customers' problems. By doing so, businesses can communicate the value of their products to potential customers and build trust with them. According to a study by MarketingSherpa, 71% of B2B buyers read case studies during their decision-making process, making them a highly effective marketing tool. Case studies provide social proof and credibility that inspire others to use the product and generate leads. Additionally, product case studies can be repurposed into blog posts, website pages, social media posts, and email marketing campaigns, giving businesses an ongoing source of content to engage their audiences.

How to Identify the Right Products for Case Studies

The first step in creating a successful product case study is identifying the right product to showcase. The ideal product is one that solves a problem that your ideal customer faces, has unique features that set it apart from competitors and generates positive results. It's important to consider the availability of resources, such as time, budget, and personnel. You also need to assess how representative the product is of your business's value proposition and goals. Finally, consider the potential impact of the case study and how well it aligns with the target audience's interests.

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Tips for Choosing the Best Format for Your Product Case Study

The format of your product case study will depend on the product, audience, and objective of your study. Common formats include written case study, video case study, podcast case study, and presentation format. The chosen format should match the objectives of your study, the target audience's preferences, and your available resources. The format should be well-designed, clear, persuasive, and include all relevant information that the reader or viewer needs to know about the product.

Elements of a Compelling Product Case Study

Effective product case studies share certain elements that make them compelling to readers and viewers. The elements include the background of the company and customer, the problem or pain point that the customer faced, the solution offered by the product, the implementation and usage of the product, and the results achieved by the customer. A good product case study should be well-structured, engaging, and informative. It should have a clear and concise message, a call to action, and be supported by data and quotes from the customer or expert.

Steps to Creating a Successful Product Case Study

The process of creating a successful product case study encompasses various steps that businesses should undertake. The first step is to identify the product, identifying the customers who use it and their needs. The second step is to collect data by researching, interviewing customers and experts. The third step is to create a structure or outline that guides the case study, including the key elements mentioned above. The fourth step is to draft the case study, edit it, and get feedback from customers and experts. Finally, businesses should promote the case study to their ideal audience through multiple channels.

Real-life Examples of Successful Product Case Studies

There are numerous examples of successful product case studies that businesses can use to inspire their strategies. One example is the Dropbox case study, a written case study that showcases Dropbox's product's integration with other services, cost savings for businesses, and customer feedback. Another example is the Hubspot case study, a video case study that focuses on the customer's business challenges, the solution, and the results achieved by their partnership with Hubspot. These case studies are well-written, engaging, and informative, providing valuable insights for potential customers.

How to Measure the Success of Your Product Case Study

After creating and promoting a product case study, it's essential to track its success to improve future strategies. Metrics such as the number of views, engagement, clicks, leads generated, sales, and customer retention rate can provide insights into the case study's effectiveness. Additionally, reviewing customer feedback such as testimonials, ratings, and reviews can give businesses valuable insights into the impact their product case study had on customers.

Best Practices for Promoting Your Product Case Studies

After creating a product case study, it's critical to promote it to reach your ideal audience effectively. Best practices for promoting your product case studies include using multiple channels such as social media, email marketing campaigns, press releases, website pages, blog posts, and paid advertising. Additionally, segmenting the audience based on their interests and preferences can increase engagement and lead generation. Finally, businesses should measure and analyze the metrics to adapt their strategies based on the case study's feedback.

Common Mistakes to Avoid in Creating Product Case Studies

Creating compelling and effective product case studies can be challenging, and it's essential to avoid common mistakes that can hinder their impact. Common mistakes include failing to target the right audience, not having a clear message or value proposition, making the case study too sales-oriented, or lacking concrete data and statistics. It's crucial to have a thorough understanding of the product, the customers, and their needs, and providing an objective evaluation of the results to avoid these pitfalls.

How to Use Customer Feedback in Your Product Case Studies

Customer feedback is an essential source of insights for businesses that want to create engaging and effective product case studies. The feedback can be collected through customer satisfaction surveys, interviews, and reviews. By incorporating customer feedback in product case studies, businesses can improve the credibility of the study, provide social proof and build trust with potential customers. Additionally, customer feedback can help businesses to improve their products, services, and marketing strategies based on customer needs and preferences.

The Role of Storytelling in Creating Effective Product Case Studies

Storytelling is a powerful tool in creating compelling and persuasive product case studies. By telling the customer's story, businesses can connect emotionally with potential customers and demonstrate the benefits, value, and relevance of the product. Storytelling can also make the case study more engaging, memorable, and relatable. The story format can help simplify complex concepts and make it easier for customers to understand the product's features and benefits.

Tips for Conducting Interviews with Customers and Experts for Your Product Case Study

Conducting interviews with customers and experts is a crucial step in creating accurate and informative product case studies. Tips for conducting successful interviews include preparing a structured agenda or script, identifying the right experts and customers, asking open-ended questions, listening actively, taking detailed notes, and following up after the interview. By conducting thorough and well-prepared interviews, businesses can gather valuable insights, quotes, and data that can help shape the product case study effectively.

How to Incorporate Data and Statistics in Your Product Case Study

Data and statistics can provide valuable insights that justify the value and impact of the product being showcased in the case study. When incorporating data and statistics in a product case study, it's essential to use credible and reliable sources, present the data in a clear and concise format, and link the data to the customers' needs and challenges. Data and statistics can also help businesses to identify trends and patterns in their customer behavior and preferences, leading to better marketing strategies and product development.

The Benefits of Using Video in Your Product Case Study

Video is a powerful and engaging format that can increase the impact and reach of product case studies. Video case studies can offer a more immersive and engaging experience for potential customers, allowing them to see the product's features, benefits, and value in action. Video case studies can also be easily shared across multiple social media platforms, generating greater brand awareness and recognition. Additionally, video case studies can provide visual data, graphs, and diagrams that can be more impactful than written or spoken testimonies.

How to Leverage Social Media to Amplify your Product Case Study

Social media is a powerful tool that can be used to amplify the reach and engagement of product case studies. Tips for leveraging social media include identifying the right social media platforms, creating shareable content that resonates with the audience, using relevant hashtags, tagging influential people in the industry, and promoting the content to targeted audiences. Social media can also be used to generate feedback, encourage testimonials, and gain insights into customers' views and opinions.

The Importance of A/B Testing in Optimizing your product case study

A/B testing can provide valuable insights into how potential customers interact with product case studies and what elements are most persuasive. A/B testing involves creating two versions of the product case study, each with a slightly different element, such as colors, headlines, or calls to action. By measuring how customers interact with each version, businesses can identify which elements are most effective and optimize the case study accordingly. A/B testing can lead to increased engagement, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction.

Best practices for collecting qualitative data through surveys and interviews

Collecting qualitative data through surveys and interviews is a valuable source of insights for product case studies. Best practices for collecting qualitative data include creating a structured interview process or survey, identifying the right questions, avoiding leading questions, listening actively, encouraging detailed responses, and using open-ended questions. Additionally, businesses should ensure confidentiality and anonymity to encourage honest and objective feedback from customers and experts.

Top mistakes businesses make when creating product case studies

Creating effective and compelling product case studies can be challenging, and businesses can make common mistakes that can hinder their impact. Common mistakes include not targeting the right audience, failing to have a clear message or value proposition, making the case study too sales-oriented, and lacking concrete data and statistics. It's crucial to have a thorough understanding of the product, the customers, and their needs, and providing an objective evaluation of the results to avoid these pitfalls.

The role of branding in creating an effective product case study

Branding plays a crucial role in creating an effective and persuasive product case study. The case study should reflect the brand identity and voice, including logos, fonts, and colors. It should also align with the target audience's preferences and interests and embody the brand's values, mission, and vision. An effective product case study should differentiate the brand from competitors and communicate the unique selling proposition. Lastly, brand consistency should be maintained across all channels and formats used to promote the case study.

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Journey Mapping: A Product Development Process Case Study

Product teams should regularly assess the product development process itself. Sebastian Gherman, a Toptal senior product manager, outlines his approach.

Underpinning every successful product is a successful product development process. As a senior product manager at Toptal, I’ve found that treating that process as a product in its own right results in measurable improvements that touch every facet of our work.

The team I lead comprises an engineering manager, nine software engineers , and one quality assurance engineer. Our work covers a wide spectrum of products and features that facilitate a healthy supply-and-demand balance for our talent network. In the sections that follow, I share how we evolved our product development process using customer journey mapping and arrived at greater efficiency, communication, and collaboration.

When the Process Is the Product, the Team Is the User

Products that are unsuccessful or ineffective often result from what a team, or even a single person, thinks users want and need, not what they actually want and need. A good product, however, is built on the qualitative and quantitative data derived from extensive user research sessions. Likewise, the product development process itself can be unsuccessful or ineffective when it is designed by a leader who assumes they know what their teams need.

As product manager or team lead, you should engage in the same kind of user research that you would carry out for a product—shadowing, interviewing, and surveying—with your team to make sure your process is similarly successful. The goal is to understand how your team is using the product development process and address any pain points they encounter along the way.

Build a Customer Journey Map

There are various ways to collect feedback from users, but customer journey mapping is the product discovery technique I use with my engineers. The result is a diagram that illustrates the steps users go through when engaging with your company, whether that be through a product, online experience, retail experience, service, or any combination of these. The more touchpoints your users have, the more complicated—and therefore necessary—a map becomes.

This technique explores users’ actions and emotions around that engagement to reveal pain points and opportunities. It’s an excellent way to uncover problems in your process.

Within the diagram, users are depicted as hypothetical personas. Each persona should have a short bio, including a description of their inner motivations and responsibilities, as this helps to humanize them. Each persona should represent a key type of user to offer a sense of the diverse wants and needs the solution must address.

Journey maps are organized by user stages. Each stage represents a major goal the user is trying to achieve in their overall journey. For each stage, and for each persona, ask your team to consider:

• Actions: What does the user do?
• Emotions: How does the user feel?
• Pain Points: What bothers the user?
• Opportunities: What are some possible solutions?

Asking the team “What bothers you about this product and how can we fix it?” would not be a useful way to gather information because, at the time the question is asked, they may not recall use cases or how they felt when they experienced an issue. Asking them to split the interaction into steps and asking them how users encounter each step helps the team surface the emotions associated with each stage of the journey.

Applying This Theory to Our Toptal Team

To understand how this theory applies in action, consider the journey map for the product development process that I created with my engineering team.

Using Miro , I created the journey map board, splitting the product development process into eight major stages:

• Roadmap Planning, and Defining Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
• Product Specification
• Technical Analysis and Work Breakdown
• Implementation
• Quality Assurance and User Acceptance Testing (UAT)
• Pre-release
• Post-release

I chose two personas—software engineer and product manager—as these are the main users who engage with the process.

• Sergey, the software engineer: Sergey ensures the initiatives are delivered on time and to a high standard, while maintaining a robust code base and understanding of the latest technologies and tools.
• Matt, the product manager: Matt ensures the team prioritizes its efforts by working on the most impactful initiatives first. He also listens to stakeholder needs and communicates updates to the team regularly.

Prior to the session, I filled out the journey map for Matt, the persona in my role, in order to get an idea of how much time was required to complete the exercise, as well as to set the team’s expectations of the format. Next, I scheduled two 90-minute sessions across two consecutive days to ensure my team had enough time to complete the exercise without losing focus or energy. Because most engineers are unfamiliar with the journey mapping process, I shared links to the Miro board and a YouTube tutorial to help them prepare. Before the beginning of the first session, I confirmed that everyone understood the concepts.

As facilitator, I asked the team to suggest the actions, emotions, pain points, and opportunities for Sergey’s persona. Some team members were shy at first, but once a few people shared their thoughts, the session started to flow. I filled out cards on the Miro board based on their input.

Key Learnings From the Journey Mapping Process

The journey mapping process yielded five main takeaways:

• Keep the sessions short and focused. If there are more than a few stages within the journey map, I advise splitting the effort into two or three sessions to maximize productivity and to prevent team members from losing focus.
• Be a role model. Filling out the Product Manager swimlanes before the session sets a tone of honesty and openness, and demonstrates how to express these issues, encouraging team members to share their own emotions and pain points more readily.
• Create emotional safety. Team members may find it intimidating to share their struggles—most likely from a fear of being judged—but try your best not to intervene. Sooner or later, a more courageous team member will break the ice and things will start moving. When that happens, show empathy and appreciation. This will reassure other members that they are in a safe environment and they will feel more comfortable sharing their thoughts.
• Create a follow-up plan with your team. Some problems may be hard to solve, especially if the solution involves other teams or departments, but plan to keep your team updated about any relevant communication with, or changes from, those responsible parties who may impact the results of the journey mapping process.
• End with action steps. Create a list of action items, and assign an owner and deadline to each, which will help you realize tangible results from the session. Some examples that resulted in our case are depicted in the following table:

Why Was the Journey Mapping Exercise Effective?

The journey mapping exercise was extremely successful in presenting potential opportunities for improvement and fostering team spirit. It helped us in the following ways:

• It uncovered issues where I believed things were running smoothly and reinforced the importance of not making assumptions. For example, I assumed that everyone had sufficient training on Jira , which was not the case. On the other end of the spectrum, I thought asking the engineering team to record demo videos for new pieces of functionality burdened them, when in fact they valued the exercise because it helped them improve their presentation techniques and lessened their anxiety around being in front of a camera.
• It illuminated some improvements I could make, such as restructuring initiative cover pages to make them more accessible for engineers.
• It empowered the engineering team to take responsibility for the outcomes within their control because they were the ones proposing changes that they could test and further iterate. It was primarily a bottom-up process.
• It revealed that the pain point hot spots were predominantly around roadmap planning and implementation.
• It forged stronger working relationships among the team by acknowledging shared challenges. For example, a number of individuals on our team thought they were the only ones struggling with the CI/CD pipeline for a particular subsystem when, in fact, most of the team was struggling.

Scaling Considerations

If every product manager or team lead for engineering goes through this process with their team, a common set of problems will likely arise, indicating which issues should be addressed first. Teams should follow the updated process for a few months, then the feedback loop must be revisited again. This cycle should continue until the product development process is natural and easy, and supports the needs of the users in building top-quality software products.

In the case of my team, our new process has delivered tangible improvements on several fronts:

• The average time for tickets in review has been reduced by 22%.
• The product OKR completion rate has risen above 90% over the course of the last three quarters.
• The service-level agreement time for high-priority bugs has been met in 100% of cases.
• There have been no failed releases due to deployment problems.
• The average number of post-release reported bugs has decreased by 37%.

If your team is involved in building products , then your process should be subject to continuous scrutiny and improvement. If one function is not performing well, or if its product development process is weaker, that will impact the end result. While I used this practice for an engineering team, it can easily translate to user research , design, UI/UX , and content teams.

Your product development process is your most important product. Use this exercise to help perfect it, and see how much it elevates every product your team makes.

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Top 10 Product Management Case Studies from Leading Global Companies

• August 25, 2023
• product management

Product management, a dynamic blend of creativity and strategy, shapes groundbreaking innovations from abstract ideas. There’s no better way to comprehend this intricate dance than by diving into real-world case studies. In this blog, we emba rk on a journey through ten illuminating case studies, dissecting each phase and challenge that architects product management triumphs. From monumental missteps to resounding victories, each case study forms a mosaic of insights, demonstrating the path from ideation to market supremacy. These insights are further enriched as we link them to frameworks rooted in product management, product marketing , and strategic innovation.

These case studies illuminate the intricate art and strategic science of product management. Each story narrates a journey through innovation, iteration, user-centricity, and strategic adaptability, underpinned by frameworks integral to product management, product marketing, and strategic innovation. From empathetic design to responsive data-driven decisions , these studies form a compendium of strategies that drive product success . Whether in the realm of technology, travel, or consumer goods, the essence of product management resonates across diverse landscapes. As we navigate through these case studies in simple steps, we glean insights that guide both budding enthusiasts and seasoned professionals through the labyrinthine corridors of innovation, igniting the spark for the next wave of transformative products.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding customer needs drives innovation, evident in Apple’s iPhone and Airbnb’s personalized experiences.
• Strategic frameworks like Lean Startup (Tesla’s Model 3) and Blue Ocean Strategy (Airbnb) guide successful evolution.
• User feedback refines products, seen in Facebook’s News Feed redesign and Uber’s pricing strategy.
• Balancing innovation with familiarity propels mass adoption, exemplified by Tesla’s Model 3.
• Data shapes effective strategies, illustrated by Google’s algorithms, Netflix’s personalization, and Uber’s pricing approaches.

Case Study 1: Apple's iPhone - Orchestrating Innovation

Step 1:  Market Gap Analysis and Opportunity Identification (Problem-Solution Fit)

Apple’s iPhone journey began by identifying a yawning market gap: consumers desired an all-in-one device. This echoes the Problem-Solution Fit framework, encapsulating the essence of understanding customer pain points and providing tailor-made solutions.

Step 2:  Design Thinking and Iterative Prototyping (Design and Development)

Apple’s iterative approach to iPhone design embodies Design Thinking. By empathizing with user needs, ideating features, and rapidly prototyping, they ensured a product that resonated with real-world usage.

Step 3:  Agile Development and Rapid Testing (Agile Methodology)

Agile development was pivotal in iPhone’s realization. Frequent feedback loops, incremental development, and rapid testing aligned with Agile’s core principles, allowing Apple to pivot based on real-time insights.

Step 4:  Branding and Storytelling (Product Marketing)

Apple’s iconic iPhone launch wasn’t just about a product; it was a masterclass in storytelling. Their branding prowess and emotive narratives exemplify Product Marketing’s essence – conveying a product’s value through relatable stories.

Step 5:  Continuous Enhancement and User-Centric Iteration (Lean Startup)

Post-launch, Apple’s commitment to user-centricity mirrored the Lean Startup approach. Regular updates, user feedback incorporation, and iterative refinements transformed the iPhone into a product that evolved in tandem with user needs.

Case Study 2: Netflix's Content Personalization - Algorithms in Action

Step 1:  Data-Driven Insights and Customer Segmentation (Market Segmentation)

Netflix’s content personalization was sparked by data-driven insights, forming the foundation of effective market segmentation. The case study aligns with the principle of understanding diverse user segments and tailoring experiences accordingly.

Step 2:  Machine Learning and AI Integration (AI and Machine Learning)

Netflix’s predictive algorithms personify the integration of AI and Machine Learning. These algorithms, fueled by user data, offer personalized content recommendations at scale, showcasing the power of AI-driven personalization.

Step 3:  User-Centric Interface and Gamification (User Experience Design)

By designing a user-centric interface and incorporating gamification elements, Netflix amplified the User Experience Design philosophy. Their approach resonates with making interactions intuitive, engaging, and aligned with user preferences.

Step 4:  Feedback Loops and Agile Improvement (Agile Framework)

Netflix’s iterative enhancement process is an embodiment of the Agile framework. By encouraging user feedback, promptly adapting based on insights, and iteratively enhancing the platform, they embraced Agile’s ethos of flexibility.

Case Study 3: Tesla's Model 3 - From Vision to Mass Market

Step 1:  Disruptive Innovation and Blue Ocean Strategy (Disruptive Innovation)

Tesla’s Model 3 journey echoes the Disruptive Innovation framework. By creating an affordable electric vehicle for the mass market, they disrupted the automotive industry and ventured into a blue ocean of opportunity.

Step 2:  Lean Production and Minimum Viable Product (Lean Production)

Tesla’s lean production tactics mirror the Lean Production framework. By emphasizing efficiency, minimizing waste, and focusing on a Minimum Viable Product (MVP), they streamlined their manufacturing process.

Step 3:  Scalability and Operations Excellence (Operational Excellence)

Tesla’s emphasis on scalability and operational excellence aligns with the Operational Excellence framework. By refining processes, optimizing supply chains, and maintaining stringent quality control, they ensured seamless growth.

Step 4:  Innovation Ecosystem and Open Innovation (Open Innovation)

Tesla’s approach to autopilot features exemplifies Open Innovation. By tapping into external expertise and welcoming user inputs, they expanded their innovation ecosystem beyond internal boundaries.

Step 5:  Sustainable Growth and Value Chain Analysis (Value Chain Analysis)

Tesla’s journey from disruption to sustainable growth aligns with Value Chain Analysis. By optimizing each value-adding activity, they established a competitive edge while sustaining long-term growth.

Case Study 4: Airbnb's Platform Evolution - Cultivating Experiences

Step 1:  Customer Journey Mapping and Pain Point Identification (Customer Journey Mapping)

Airbnb’s evolution stemmed from mapping customer journeys and pinpointing pain points. By understanding user frustrations with traditional accommodations, they crafted a solution that resonated.

Step 2:  Rapid Prototyping and MVP Development (Minimum Viable Product)

Airbnb’s iterative evolution echoes the Minimum Viable Product approach. Rapid prototyping, embracing feedback, and building on the MVP allowed them to evolve the platform effectively.

Step 3:  Trust Building and Reputation Management (Reputation Management)

Airbnb’s focus on building trust among users aligns with Reputation Management principles. By nurturing a positive brand perception and managing user reviews, they established credibility and loyalty.

Step 4:  Global Expansion and Market Entry Strategy (Market Entry Strategy)

Airbnb’s global expansion reflects a well-executed Market Entry Strategy. Adapting to local cultures while preserving core offerings exemplifies the importance of understanding diverse markets.

Step 5:  Community Building and Network Effects (Network Effects)

Airbnb’s success thrived on harnessing Network Effects. Their initiatives for fostering community engagement created a positive feedback loop, amplifying user engagement and the platform’s value.

Case Study 5: Google's Search Engine - Algorithmic Prowess

Step 1:  Competitive Analysis and Market Positioning (Competitive Analysis)

Google’s journey commenced with competitive analysis, establishing a unique market  positioning . This strategic move underscores the importance of differentiating oneself in a crowded landscape.

Step 2:  Algorithmic Design and Innovation Framework (Innovation Framework)

Google’s introduction of the PageRank algorithm epitomizes  innovation frameworks . By introducing a groundbreaking approach to ranking web pages, they reshaped the landscape through innovative thinking.

Step 3:  Continuous Improvement and Kaizen Philosophy (Kaizen Philosophy)

Google’s iterative evolution embodies the Kaizen philosophy. By focusing on continuous improvement, incremental changes, and user-centricity, they sustained a competitive edge.

Step 4:  Monetization Strategies and Business Model Canvas (Business Model Canvas)

Google’s monetization through AdWords aligns with the Business Model Canvas. Identifying partners, customer segments, and revenue streams exemplifies crafting a holistic monetization strategy.

Case Study 6: Amazon's Prime Membership - Enriching Ecosystems

Step 1:  Customer Persona Development and Empathy Mapping (Empathy Mapping)

Amazon’s Prime journey initiated with crafting customer personas and empathy mapping. Stepping into users’ shoes, they devised an offering that catered to their desires and expectations.

Step 2:  Ecosystem Expansion and Blue Ocean Strategy (Blue Ocean Strategy)

Amazon’s expansion of Prime reflects Blue Ocean Strategy. By tapping into uncharted territories like streaming and e-books, they enriched their ecosystem, creating unprecedented value.

Step 3:  Data-Driven Decision-Making and KPI Measurement (KPI Measurement)

Amazon’s data-driven approach aligns with KPI measurement. Tracking key performance indicators , analyzing user behavior, and adapting offerings underscored the power of  data-driven decision-making .

Step 4:  Innovation and Disruptive Business Models (Disruptive Business Models)

Amazon’s introduction of Prime Day and Whole Foods discounts mirrors disruptive business models. By redefining industry norms, they sustained innovation and customer engagement.

Case Study 7: Coca-Cola's "New Coke" Fiasco - A Lesson in Perception Management

Step 1:  Market Research and Customer Surveys (Customer Surveys)

Coca-Cola’s reformulation of “New Coke” stemmed from extensive market research and surveys. This phase underscores the significance of gathering  consumer insights  and sentiments.

Step 2:  Change Management and Stakeholder Alignment (Change Management)

The response to “New Coke” highlighted the importance of change management. Ensuring alignment among internal stakeholders and managing transitions smoothly was pivotal.

Step 3:  Crisis Management and Reputation Recovery (Crisis Management)

Coca-Cola’s swift reversion to the original formula showcases effective crisis management. Acknowledging mistakes and reverting to a familiar product salvaged their brand reputation.

Case Study 8: Facebook's News Feed Redesign - Sculpting User-Centric Experiences

Step 1:  User Persona Development and User-Centered Design (User-Centered Design)

Facebook’s redesign journey commenced with user persona development and user-centered design. Focusing on user needs and preferences resulted in an interface aligned with user expectations.

Step 2:  Iterative Prototyping and Rapid Testing (Iterative Prototyping)

Facebook’s iterative approach mirrors the iterative prototyping framework. Creating prototypes, incorporating feedback, and refining designs ensured a seamless and user-friendly interface.

Step 3:  Ethical Design and Human-Centered AI (Ethical Design)

As concerns about user well-being grew, Facebook’s ethical design approach emerged. This phase highlights the importance of crafting technology that respects human well-being.

Step 4:  Storytelling and Emotional Branding (Emotional Branding)

Facebook’s storytelling approach echoes emotional branding. By weaving narratives that evoke emotions, they deepened their connection with users and fostered engagement.

Case Study 9: Microsoft's Windows 8 - Balancing Innovation and Familiarity

Step 1:  Ideation and Blue Sky Thinking (Blue Sky Thinking)

Microsoft’s Windows 8 journey began with blue sky thinking – embracing innovative ideas. This phase underscores the significance of bold thinking to reshape industries.

Step 2:  User Testing and Usability Iteration (Usability Iteration)

User testing and usability iteration exemplify Microsoft’s approach. Incorporating user feedback and iterating based on insights ensured a product that met user expectations.

Step 3:  Change Management and Internal Buy-In (Internal Buy-In)

The Windows 8 case highlights the importance of internal buy-in during change management. Gaining stakeholder support and managing transitions are vital for successful innovation.

Step 4:  Learning from Failure and Agile Mindset (Agile Mindset)

Microsoft’s response to user feedback reflects an agile mindset. Embracing failures as learning opportunities and adapting swiftly aligns with the principles of agility.

Case Study 10: Uber's Surge Pricing Strategy - Navigating Economics and User Perception

Step 1:  Demand-Supply Analysis and Pricing Optimization (Pricing Optimization)

Uber’s surge pricing strategy began with analyzing demand and supply dynamics. This phase emphasizes the importance of pricing optimization to balance economic viability and user sentiment.

Step 2:  Communication Strategy and Transparent Messaging (Communication Strategy)

Uber’s enhancement of their communication strategy was prompted by user confusion. Transparent messaging is vital for managing user expectations and preventing negative perceptions.

Step 3:  Ethical Pricing and Value Proposition (Ethical Pricing)

Uber’s approach to balancing profitability and ethics aligns with the Ethical Pricing framework. Maintaining a compelling value proposition even during surge pricing showcases a customer-first mindset.

Step 4:  Data-Driven Decision-Making and Continuous Improvement (Data-Driven Decision-Making)

Uber’s responsiveness to user behavior and feedback reflects data-driven decision-making. Analyzing user patterns and continuously adapting pricing strategies aligns with data-centric approaches.

Frequently Asked Questions

2024 estimate: Considering the current trajectory and projected growth, we can speculate that the average product manager salary in India for 2024 could be somewhere between ₹15 lakhs and ₹35 lakhs per year.

Product Manager salaries tend to increase with higher seniority levels. For instance, an Assistant Product Manager might earn ₹12.9 Lakhs, while a Chief Product Officer can command a salary of ₹1.2 Crores.

Some of the leading tech companies in India, such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta, offer competitive Product Manager salaries, with figures exceeding ₹50 Lakhs per annum.

Location plays a significant role in determining Product Manager salaries. Cities with a thriving tech ecosystem like Bangalore and Hyderabad tend to offer higher salaries.

Specialized skills, such as Agile Software Development, Product Strategy, and Go-to-Market Strategy, are highly rewarded in the field of Product Management.

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6 Product Management Case Studies You Can't Miss

Associate Product Marketer at Zeda.io.

Mahima Arora

Created on:

June 26, 2024

Updated on:

8 mins read

Transform Insights into Impact

Build Products That Drive Revenue and Delight Customers!

Product management case studies are detailed analyses of how a product was conceptualized, developed, and marketed. A typical product management case study contains the following:

• The pain points and expectations of the user
• Competing products in the market
• Development , delivery, and iteration methods
• Marketing strategies implemented to relay the product’s value proposition
• How the product was received
• Lessons for the product team

So, why should you learn about the development of a product in so much detail? The answer lies in the sixth bullet.

Let’s look at how reading case studies related to product management can help you.

How product management case studies help you

Here’s why reading product management case studies is a worthwhile investment of your time. A well-written case study:

• Gives you an in-depth understanding of real product problems : Meeting or exceeding the expectations of the customers is always challenging. Whether it is technical complexities, budget limitations, or organizational miscommunication, a case study helps you recognize the source of the problem which led to the development of a less-desirable product.
• Contains practical insights outside of the theory : Even a layman can learn the steps of SaaS product management . However, seasoned product managers know that developing a successful product takes more than learning the development steps. These case studies contain tons of real-life scenarios and the lessons that come with them.
• Educates you and makes you a better product manager: Product management case study examples take you through the journey of developing a product, which helps you improve your existing approach toward product development. You will also learn better ways to manage your team and resources.

In simple terms, a product management case study helps teams learn lessons that they can emulate to develop a more profitable product.

In this article, let’s look at six product management case studies that are a must-read for every product manager.

1. Slack: Initial product launch strategy

Stewart Butterfield started a gaming company called Tiny Speck to change the world of massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG). Him and his team created Glitch which was quite different from other games in that genre such as World of Warcraft.

Glitch was a 2D game that did not have the violent aspects that typical MMORPG games had at the time. It allowed extensive character personalization and Butterfield described it as “Monty Python crossed with Dr. Seuss on acid”.

While building Glitch, Butterfield and his team used the Internet Relay Chat (IRC), an online chat tool popular in the 80s and 90s. However, it fell short as the team found it difficult to keep track of past conversations, which motivated them to build their own communication tool.

As they developed Glitch, their internal chat tool gained more features based on their needs.

Despite lots of support from investors, Glitch was unable to attract enough players to keep running profitably and Butterfield eventually shut it down in 2012 .

After six months, in early 2013, Butterfield renamed their internal communication tool Slack - acronym for Searchable Log of All Conversation and Knowledge and requested his friends and colleagues to try it out and give feedback — they all loved it.

By May 2013, Slack was ready for the big reveal which posed a new challenge — executing the perfect launch strategy to drive demand.

Slack’s Challenge: Nailing the initial product launch

While launching an app that can have such an impact on how organizations work, it is crucial to get it right. At the time, there weren’t many team messaging apps and most teams had conversations via email.

Slack needed a significant number of early adopters to validate their hypotheses about team collaboration and collect data that will help them improve its services further. Consequently, this increased the stakes for the first launch.

How did Slack do it

CEO Stewart Butterfield revealed that on the first day of the launch, Slack welcomed 8000 new users which rose to 15000 at the end of the second week. The credit for this initial success, he explains, went primarily to social media.

Social media helped Slack deliver its PR pieces through its genuine users. This led to a snowballing effect because people interacted with people.

Slack recorded over 18 million active users in 2020.

Although the impact of social media-based word-of-mouth marketing will have different levels of success as it depends on factors such as the type of product and its use cases, you should have a social media marketing strategy to spread the word.

Suggested Read: Leveraging VoC-driven AI Insights to Build Revenue-generating Products

2. Superhuman: Finding product-market fit

‍ Superhuman is a premium email service for busy teams and professionals who need more of everything; speed, usability, and personalization. Apart from superb design, Superhuman processes and executes any request within 100ms.

Rahul Vohra built Rapportive in 2010 — a plugin that adds social profiles to Gmail which was later acquired by LinkedIn . This gave Vohra an intimate view of email and quickly realized that things will progressively get worse.

In his words, “I could see Gmail getting worse every single year, becoming more cluttered, using more memory, consuming more CPU, slowing down your machine, and still not working properly offline.” 

He also brought attention to the number of plugins people used, “And on top of that, people were installing plugins like ours, Rapportive, but also Boomerang, Mixmax, Clearbit, you name it, they had it. And each plugin took those problems of clutter, memory, CPU, performance offline, and made all of them dramatically worse.”

Vohra had one question in his mind — how different would the email experience be if it was designed today instead of 12 years ago?

‍ Superhuman was born to give professionals the email experience that they have been long waiting for. Smooth, easy on the eyes, and most importantly, blazingly fast.

But, there was one elephant in the room.

The idea of building a better email service than the existing players sounded great. However, going against some of the biggest brands of Silicon Valley required more than a bad personal experience with Gmail. 

The Superhuman team needed evidence that such a product is actually desirable.

Superhuman’s Challenge: Establishing product-market fit

The team at Superhuman was competing against the email services of Apple, Google, and Microsoft which made the product-market fit quite crucial.

But how do you know whether you have achieved product-market fit?

How did Superhuman do it

Vohra and his team came up with an innovative idea to measure product-market fit by testing crucial hypotheses and focusing on the right target audience.

Superhuman had two hypotheses :

• People are dissatisfied with Gmail and how slow it is.
• People are also dissatisfied with third-party email clients and how buggy they were.

In a product management case study , Vohra explained how to find the right audience — the users who would be ‘very disappointed’ if they could no longer use your product. After identifying them, all you have to do is build the product as they want it.

3. Medium: “Highlights” feature

Evan Williams co-founded Blogger and Twitter which has helped millions of people share their thoughts with the world. Although both platforms became quite popular, they still couldn’t deliver the best reading experience to their users. Blogger allowed readers to browse topics by authors only and Twitter made it difficult for authors to aptly describe themselves.

He quickly recognized the need for a publishing platform that delivers a diverse experience for the readers and allows the authors to speak their hearts.

That’s how Medium was born. It enabled readers to browse articles by topics and authors, helping them to gain different perspectives on any particular subject. It also allowed everyone from professional programmers to amateur chefs to share their insights with the world as they wanted it.

The developers slowly added more features to Medium such as tags, linked images, social cards, and sharing drafts as it evolved through the years.

One of the many notable features of the platform is the “Highlight” feature — where you can select any particular post section and treat it as a mini-post. You can comment on the Highlight or tweet it, which is handy for both personal revision and sharing interesting snippets with others.

Suggested Read: Want to become a Product Coach?

Medium’s Challenge: Determining whether “Highlights” added value

Medium faced a challenge while determining a metric that can give them an accurate assessment of the desirability of this feature. In other words, they needed a metric that would tell them whether the “Highlights” feature made user interactions better and more rewarding.

How did Medium do it

The team at Medium solved the challenge by shifting their focus to one crucial metric rather than multiple vanity metrics such as organic visits and retention time which signifies how much value your users are getting out of your product based on retention rate. 

For Medium, it was Total Time Reading (TTR) . It is calculated by estimating the average read time which is the number of words divided by the average reading speed (about 265 WPM) and adding the time spent by the reader lingering over good paragraphs by tracking scrolling speed.

4. Ipsy: Managing distribution 

Michelle Phan started her journey as a YouTuber who recognized the importance of makeup in someone’s self-expression. She has been sharing beauty tips and makeup tutorials with her audience since 2007. 

While on a trip to Thailand, she observed how little girls scrambled to pay for makeup samples in front of vending machines. Five years later, she launched a subscription-based Glam Bag program — where the customers will receive 4-5 deluxe-sized samples of makeup products.

MyGlam, as it was known back then, quickly gained over half-a-million monthly subscribers which created one of the biggest online beauty communities.

Phan quickly realized what she wanted to do — to build a brand for women who wanted to share their perspectives on beauty and meet like-minded people with similar interests and styles.

Ipsy , which comes from the Latin root “ipse” meaning “self”, was created by Phan, Marcelo Camberos, Jennifer Goldfarb, and Richard Frias to expand the user experience.

Although Phan knew how to convert viewers into paying customers, executing a marketing strategy by scaling it up was challenging.

Ipsy’s Challenge: Managing a content distribution strategy

The first makeup tutorial by Michelle Phan has now over 12 million views. Videos like that helped Phan get her first subscribers on her MyGlam program.

This shows the importance and impact of influencer-led content on revenue for businesses in the beauty industry.

However, running an influencer content distribution strategy involves collaborating with multiple passionate influencers. It was challenging to find like-minded influencers who will promote only one brand. Moreover, when working with influencers, it's important to implement effective content moderation to make sure the posted content aligns with your goals.

Phan and her team had a simple solution for this.

How did Ipsy do it

Phan and Spencer McClung, EVP of Media and Partnerships at Ipsy, partnered with beauty influencers like Bethany Mota, Promise Phan, Jessica Harlow, and Andrea Brooks who were already subscribed to MyGlam to create content exclusively for Ipsy.

In a case study analysis, McClung revealed that it put Ipsy on a content-based growth loop where the content was created by both the influencers and customers for the beauty community.

Sponsored content for products by influencers helped them increase their reach and helped Ipsy get more loyal customers. This growth loop gained Ipsy over 3 million monthly subscribers .

Suggested Read: Pivoting equals failure?🤯

5. Stitch Fix: Mastering personalization

Katrina Lake, the founder of Stitch Fix , realized back in 2011 that apparel shopping needed an upgrade. eCommerce failed to meet the expectations of the shoppers and retail shops were falling short in terms of options.

In an interview with The Cut , she revealed "Searching online for jeans is a ridiculously bad experience. And I realized that if I imagined a different future, I could create it."

After realizing that no one has merged data and fashion shopping, she set out to make a difference. She started a personal styling service out of her apartment in 2011 when she was pursuing her MBA from Harvard.

Lake relied on SurveyMonkey to keep track of her customer’s preferences and charged $20 as a styling fee. In late 2012 Eric Colson, then the VP of data science and engineering at Netflix, joined Lake on her journey of crafting the future of retail.

Lake and Colson wanted to give their customers much more than just personalized recommendations.

Stitch Fix’s Challenge: Building a personalized store

Stitch Fix wanted to give their customers more than just personalized recommendations — they wanted to build a personalized store for them where everything they look at, from clothes to accessories, matches their flavor.

But everyone’s body dimensions, preferences, budgets, and past choices are unique which can make building a personalized store difficult.

The team at Stitch Fix found a simple yet effective solution for this challenge.

How did Stitch Fix do it

Katrina Lake, CEO of Stitch Fix, revealed in a case study that personalization is crucial for the onboarding, retention, and monetization of customers.

When signing up, Stitch Fix asks you a few questions about your fashion choices and picks clothes that look the best on you. Furthermore, the collections in your personal store will keep improving as it continuously learns more about your personal preferences.

Also, there is no subscription fee which makes Stitch Fix a great option for occasional shoppers. Suggested Read: Canva’s Success Tale in the World of Design

6. Pinterest: User retention

Ben Silbermann started his tech career at Google’s customer support department. Although he loved the company and believed in its vision, he quickly became frustrated as he wasn’t allowed to build products.

With support from his girlfriend (now wife) Divya and a college friend Paul Sciarra (co-founder), Ben created an app called “Tote” in 2009 which was described as a “catalog for the phone”. Tote allowed users to catalog their favorite items and will be alerted whenever they were on sale so they can make a purchase.

However, the users used it to share their collections with each other instead. Ben recalled how he collected insects as a kid and loved sharing his collection with others. He recognized how people, in general, love to do that.

And, just like that, Pinterest was born where users can “pin” whatever they are interested in and add it to their personal collections.

Pinterest quickly became a hit and entered the global market.

Despite huge success within the US, Pinterest struggled to retain users globally. The team realized that the primary reason users churned is that something stopped them from getting the product’s core value — building personal collections.

Pinterest’s Challenge: Helping customers quickly realize the core value

There are many things that can prevent a user from accessing a product’s core value and one of them is internal friction within the product.

Pinterest’s product folks zeroed in on the one feature that was the gateway to the product’s core value — the “Pin It” feature.

Users outside the US simply couldn’t relate to the term, even though all it did was save the item they like to their personal collection.

How did Pinterest do it

The “Pin It” feature of Pinterest is linked directly to its brand identity. Casey Winters, former growth product lead at Pinterest, suggested changing it to “Save”, particularly in areas outside of the US.

As of the third quarter of 2022, it has over 445 million monthly users all over the world exploring various “ideas” to build collections for sharing with their friends.

Casey concludes in the product management case study that checking whether the users are getting your product’s core value is pivotal in solving most of your growth challenges.

Key Takeaways

Case studies for product management contain in-depth insights that help product teams improve their approach toward their product’s ideation, analysis , development, and commercialization.

The six product management case study examples we reviewed above give these crucial insights:

• Slack : Don’t forget to use social media for marketing your product before its launch.
• Superhuman : Focus on the users that will be “very disappointed” if they can’t use your product anymore to achieve product-market fit.
• Medium : Track the one metric that tells you whether your users are getting value from your product rather than vanity metrics such as organic traffic.
• Ipsy : Partner with influencers to educate your target audience on how to get the most out of your product.
• Stitch Fix : Learn about what your users want and recommend them just that.
• Pinterest : Continuously experiment by changing multiple variables to uncover new growth opportunities.

To put these lessons into practice, you need to provide your team with the right tools that help them interact with your users, learn about their preferences, monitor their usage data, plan the next steps, and manage product development effectively.

Zeda.io is a product management super-app that allows you to do just that. You can run your entire product management process , from ideation to delivery, in one place. Zeda.io comes with over 5000 integrations with Zapier, enabling you to hit the ground running in no time.

Start your free trial today . Also, looking for the latest trends in AI, UX, product management, and startups? Join our biweekly newsletter now! We distill complex topics into actionable insights just for you. Hit the 'Subscribe' button and never miss out on these valuable updates. Act now – because in the fast-paced world of tech, staying ahead matters! Subscribe here.

• What is a product management case study?

Answer: A product management case study is a detailed analysis of how a product was developed and iterated over time for maximum success. These studies help product managers learn from others and improve their own approach toward product management.

• How do you prepare a product management case?

Answer: You can prepare a product management case study in four steps — understand customer needs, monitor the stages of development, identify the factors that affected the course of product development, and extract takeaways.

• What are the 3 major areas of product management?

Answer: Discovery — recognizing the need for a product, planning — creating a roadmap to plan the product’s development, and development — the various sprints through which a product is developed are three major areas of product management.

• What are the 7 steps of product planning?

Answer: Concept development, competitive analysis, market research, MVP development, introduction, product lifecycle, and sunset are the seven steps of product planning.

• What are the 5 dimensions of product management?

Answer: Reliability, usability, functionality, maintainability, and efficiency are the five dimensions of product management.

• What are the 4 P's of product management?

Answer: Product, price, place, and promotion are the 4Ps of product management which represent four crucial aspects product teams should simultaneously focus on while developing a product. 

• What are the 5 phases of the product management process?

Answer: Idea generation, screening, concept development, product development, and commercialization are the five phases of the product management process .

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• Nike: Product development from concept to customer

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Product development from concept to consumer.

Nike is the world's largest sports and fitness company, earning $US14 billion in revenue. The company, with one of the world's most identifiable logos - the 'swoosh', is a leader in sports equipment research and development (R&D). Nike identified a gap in the sports shoe market - a shoe which mimics barefoot running in order to strengthen runners' feet and legs, giving them more power and speed while reducing the risk of injury. After extensive R&D, the shoe, Nike Free, was developed. Nike Free was given an initial, strictly controlled, limited 12 month release before being promoted to consumers worldwide. After reading this Case Study, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate and evaluate the stages involved in the product development, from conception of a product, through the research and development stage, to design, production, promotion and market release
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• Identify promotion strategies and their application as they apply to Nike Free and other Nike products.

Nike's 'swoosh' is one of the world's most identifiable logos and, in just 32 years, Nike has grown to be the industry's largest sports and fitness company.

Innovation is what sets Nike apart in the industry.

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Ensuring correct product positioning

Nike was conscious that Nike Free needed to be positioned as an additional training shoe in your kit bag, not necessarily as a replacement to your traditional running shoes.

Advertising is synonymous with Nike. In partnership with its advertising agency, Nike has created some of the world's most attention-grabbing advertising.

Nike aims to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world - and it considers everybody to be an athlete!

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• Product Management
• New product development process

New product development: 7-step guide

Browse topics.

Delivering innovative products can help you gain a competitive advantage, but maintaining that advantage requires continuously delivering new products that keep pace with your customers' evolving needs. New product development is the key to building and keeping market share and customer loyalty.

What is new product development?

New product development is the end-to-end process of creating a product that has never been brought to market—from idea to concept, prototyping, developing, testing, and launch. It involves building a product strategy and roadmap to successfully guide cross-functional teams and stakeholders through the entire process.

Unlike product enhancements and upgrades that modify and improve existing products, new product development addresses the unique challenges of designing and delivering brand-new products. This article discusses the seven stages of new product development, some challenges Agile teams face along the way, and how you can succeed.

The 7 stages of new product development

Successful Agile software development takes careful planning and good project management practices . The seven stages of new product development guide you through the process by breaking the work into stages or steps.

1. Generating ideas

Every new product begins with a problem and ideas to solve it. Ideas may come from within the company, such as the customer service team, or from outside via customer and market research. In this phase, it's important to gather all ideas without discrimination. The more ideas you can brainstorm, the better.

Products such as Jira Product Discovery help product teams structure the chaos of prolific ideas. Ideas can be supported by data, customer feedback, sales input, support tickets, and more to help shape what the product team should focus on, creating ongoing feedback loops. Idea generation is most effective as a team activity with the outcome of developing the essential elements for a new product. 

To help you prioritize ideas, methods such as a SWOT or Competitive analysis take the guess-work out of the process. When generating ideas, having a clear understanding of where opportunities exist and knowing how the competition stacks up can lead to brainstorming disruptive and game-changing ideas.

2. Screening ideas

Agile teams can use Jira Product Discovery matrixes to view a large number of ideas, using criteria such as impact, effort, and confidence level before scoring and selecting which ideas to move into the next phase. Gathering and organizing product ideas in a centralized tool makes it easier for product teams to prioritize which ideas or features will drive the most impact.

Scoring ideas by product development effort versus the overall impact of the solution is an excellent way to focus on those with the most impact. The SWOT and competitive analysis templates from step 1 can provide the foundation for where to place priorities. 

You can also identify good ideas that are simply not right for this new product but may be suitable for future products and the goals of the team. Screening ideas can be difficult, but aligning each good idea to your goals and comparing its impact to other ideas will help identify the most impactful opportunities.

3. Creating a product strategy

After selecting ideas to develop into a new product, it's time to create your product strategy. This is a concise definition of the need that the new product meets. A good product strategy includes the vision, target market or user, position in the industry, features and benefits, and the value the new product brings to the business. This phase involves creating a clear definition of the requirements.

Confluence offers a strategic plan template that can help you refine your strategy messaging, remove ambiguity, and clearly communicate the goal. From here, the Confluence requirements template walks you through the process of outlining your objectives and success metrics, listing assumptions and options to address them, and adding supporting documentation. These efforts include prototyping and validating with customers, ensuring the product being built will be something that customers actually want.

4. Building a product roadmap

A product roadmap is an action plan. It outlines product functionality and release schedules and helps you manage new product development. Think of the roadmap as the core communication tool for short- and long-term efforts that align with your business goals. It's a shared source of truth for a product’s vision, direction, priorities, and progress over time. Creating a great product roadmap keeps your entire team working together and moving in the same direction (try our product roadmap template ). They also make it easy to check in on the work at any time throughout the product development life cycle.

Product teams using Jira Product Discovery can then share their product strategy using always-up-to-date, custom roadmaps to present which ideas will be built, when, and why.

5. Prototyping

Time to market is critical for new product development, and your ability to rapidly prototype and develop products ensures viable solutions. Jira Product Discovery’s integration with software development tools like Jira  makes it easy to seamlessly connect your entire software delivery lifecycle.

Defects and change requests are simply a fact of new product development, but concise tracking and issue management keep everyone on your team informed, organized, and on schedule. Testing can span both internal quality assurance (QA) teams as well as customers and end users engaged in alpha, beta, or user acceptance testing. Jira  is the leading tool that Agile teams use for testing, in part because it optimizes the QA workflow by writing and managing test scripts, tracking test cases, and managing defects. 

The product roadmap template from the previous step, along with other Confluence project planning templates , also inform testing and help ensure you miss nothing.

7. Product launch

You only get one chance to make a good first impression, and launching a new product requires careful planning and delivery. Every step in the process is a building block to a successful launch. Confluence’s product launch template helps ensure a smooth launch.

Additionally, sales and marketing, HR, and legal teams are already using your product strategy and roadmap to align messaging, identify opportunities, and ensure regulatory compliance. Using Jira , they can seamlessly connect their work with the product team’s. It provides a streamlined UI and integrations with the tools they use daily, such as Gantt charts and spreadsheets.

4 main types of product development

There are four types of product development, including:

• New product development : These are products that haven’t been released in the market before, such as software applications that solve new or novel customer problems. 
• New product categories : These products may not be new to the marketplace, but they are new to the company developing them. For example, a software company may expand their offering to include products within the category they currently develop, such as adding tax accounting to their portfolio of personal finance applications. 
• Product line extensions : These expand the products offered within the organization’s existing range of products, such as adding new industries within a category. For example, a company may develop accounting software for the construction industry and decide to extend their accounting software to the airline industry.
• Product enhancements : These are new features and capabilities within existing products. Companies generally design them to provide customers with new or added value. Enhancements respond to changes in the market, performance issues, or new competitive products. 

Example of new product development

Whether creating a new product that hasn’t been seen in the market before, or expanding an existing application to address new geographic locations, understanding the time it will take to develop is essential. 

Jira insights help teams make data-driven decisions based on their own historical progress. Insights can come from every aspect of the product development process and provide continuous improvement opportunities with each new product development project.  

3 challenges teams encounter in the new product development process

Great tools can help alleviate the challenges of new product development. Understanding these challenges and how to address them can keep your team on track for a successful launch.

1. Defining clear requirements

When speed is important, the requirements often become an ironclad set of instructions. While clear requirements are necessary, Agile teams must have a shared understanding of and empathy for the customer. Include various members of your team in requirements-gathering activities, such as customer interviews. When designers, developers, and QA share an understanding of user stories, they can produce results more quickly and accurately without maintaining rigid rules.

Confluence’s requirements template gives you the power to capture and update assumptions, use cases, UX design, and scope together.

2. Estimating the development effort

Working with realistic project timelines is essential for bringing new products to market and gaining a competitive advantage. However, product development tasks are notoriously difficult to estimate, and new product development can be even harder. Break work into smaller tasks for more accurate estimates. In addition to giving you more flexibility with resource assignments, smaller tasks minimize the impact on your overall project when something takes longer than expected.

Many Agile teams have switched from traditional estimates to story points—units that measure the effort teams require to fully implement a user story. A user story is an informed explanation of a feature from the user's perspective. With Jira, Agile teams track story points, reflect, and quickly recalibrate estimates.

3. Siloed tools

Collaboration is a critical component in your team's success and the success of their products. Development teams use a variety of specialized tools, such as visual design tools for creating mock-ups and instant messaging apps for hosting team discussions. No single tool can provide the specialized functionality for all the needs of the development team. Jira Product Discovery and Jira integrate with a wide range of specialized development tools to easily collect and incorporate important information.

How long does new product development take?

The time to develop a new product can vary widely based on the complexity of that product. For example, developing an application that securely processes credit card payments may take magnitudes longer than developing software to track exercise statistics. But a few tips can help reduce the time to market while maintaining quality. 

Expert tips from Atlassian for new product development

Understand the customer.

Begin with the customer’s needs in mind. The time you spend early, interviewing customers and gathering input, helps create a clear product strategy. The entire team should understand the problem they are solving for the customer. It will keep the team on track when they make decisions during development. 

Foster team collaboration

When the team has the tools for seamless collaboration, generating ideas, prioritizing issues, and solving problems is much easier. Today’s product development teams include a wide range of cross-functional roles. The best way to prevent silos and keep the team working together is with collaboration, respect, and genuine appreciation for each other’s contributions. Centralized tools such as Jira Product Discovery and Jira help foster this.

Define the requirements

A good product specification outlines the purpose, what the client needs the product to do, the technical and functional requirements to achieve that, design mockups, and even release plans. This foundational document takes time to create, but it helps teams refine and clarify fuzzy requirements and align on the scope of the project. 

Optimize resource allocation

Resource allocation is among the hardest aspects of new product development, so the roadmap must be well-defined before you begin. Understand the tasks included in the project, their dependencies, and the resources required. Visual workflows can help teams identify when you underutilize or overcommit resources. They can also highlight bottlenecks and roadblocks to allow teams to quickly adjust and stay on track. 

Jira makes new product development easier

Jira  provides success tools for new product development teams to collaborate on and manage work from idea to product launch. Agile teams have made Jira the leading solution for new product development.

Jira Product Discovery is a dedicated tool that aids teams in crucial stages of product development. It helps Agile teams gather and prioritize ideas and align everyone with product roadmaps. 

With Jira Product Discovery matrixes and criteria, you can easily select which ideas to move ahead with, enhancing the experience of product development.

How to Manage Scrum Remote Teams

Learn about what scrum remote teams are, as well as how to manage them. Read about benefits, challenges and helpful tools to use.

Remote Teams Explained [+ Strategies for Success]

Do you work on a distributed team, maybe remote or virtual? Learn how to manage, structure and build culture with a distributed agile team.

• Oct 4, 2023

Five Successful Product Design Case Studies that Drive Business Growth

Product design is a powerful catalyst for driving business growth. It goes beyond creating aesthetically pleasing products and delves into crafting compelling user experiences that captivate your target audience.

When your product resonates with customers emotionally, it establishes a strong connection that translates into brand loyalty, increased sales, and sustained business growth.

Paying careful attention to every aspect of your product's design, from its functionality to its visual appeal, can differentiate your brand and create a competitive advantage in the market.

In this article, we will explore five remarkable product design case studies that exemplify the impact of product design on driving business growth. These real-life examples showcase how companies like Apple Inc., Tesla Inc., Airbnb, Slack, and Coca-Cola leveraged product design to revolutionize their industries and achieve remarkable success.

By dissecting these case studies, we can extract valuable insights and actionable strategies that can be applied to your product, UI, or UX design projects.

Before we explore the case studies, it's worth mentioning our previous articles that provide a broader context. In " What to Ask Before a Product Design Project? (18 Top Questions!) ," we discussed the key questions to ask before starting a product design project.

Asking the right questions helps you gain a deeper understanding of your target audience, define clear goals, and lay the foundation for effective product design that drives business growth.

Now, let's delve into the captivating case studies that demonstrate the power of product design in driving business growth.

Table of Content

Case study 1: apple inc. - iphone, key takeaways from apple's product design strategy, case study 2: tesla inc. - model s.

Lessons to Learn from Telsa's Product Design Approach

Case Study 3: Airbnb - User Interface Redesign

Key learnings from airbnb's ui design transformation, case study 4: slack - user experience enhancement, noteworthy insights from slack's ux design journey, case study 5: coca-cola - packaging redesign, valuable takeaways from coca-cola's packaging design approach, final thoughts.

Launch Your Products With Ease at the BraveUX Platform

Further Reading

Background of Apple Inc. and Its Focus on Product Design

Apple Inc., renowned for its commitment to innovation, has made product design a cornerstone of its success. The company consistently strives to create products that blend cutting-edge technology with elegant design.

From the Macintosh to the iPod, Apple has demonstrated its prowess in delivering exceptional user experiences. The iPhone is a standout example of Apple's dedication to product design [ 1 ].

Overview of the iPhone's Revolutionary Design

Upon its release in 2007, the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone industry with its sleek and intuitive design. It introduced a touchscreen interface that eliminated the need for physical keyboards, paving the way for a new era of user interaction.

The iPhone's minimalist aesthetics and seamless hardware and software integration set a new smartphone standard, captivating users worldwide [ 2 ].

Impact of iPhone's Design on Apple's Business Growth

The design of the iPhone played a pivotal role in propelling Apple's business growth. The combination of its sleek appearance, user-friendly interface, and innovative features garnered a dedicated following of loyal customers.

The iPhone's success not only boosted Apple's revenue but also solidified the brand's reputation as a leader in the tech industry. Its iconic design became synonymous with quality, reliability, and cutting-edge technology, driving customer loyalty and market dominance [ 3 ].

Apple's product design strategy offers valuable insights for businesses aiming to drive growth. Firstly, emphasizing the seamless integration of hardware and software demonstrates the importance of holistic user experiences.

Secondly, Apple's commitment to sleek and minimalist aesthetics showcases the power of visual appeal in capturing consumer attention.

Lastly, the iPhone's continuous evolution through iterative design updates highlights the significance of staying ahead of market trends and consistently improving the user experience.

By studying Apple's product design approach, businesses can learn the importance of prioritizing user-centric design, pushing boundaries to create innovative experiences, and adapting to evolving consumer needs. Apple's success with the iPhone serves as a testament to the transformative impact of effective product design on business growth.

Tesla Inc. and Its Emphasis on Product Design

Tesla Inc., the visionary electric vehicle manufacturer led by Elon Musk, strongly emphasizes product design.

The company's commitment to creating innovative, sustainable, and visually striking vehicles has set it apart in the automotive industry. One standout example of Tesla's product design excellence is the Model S [ 4 ].

The Model S's Design Features

The Model S, Tesla's flagship electric vehicle, boasts a design that seamlessly merges performance, sustainability, and luxury. Its sleek silhouette, aerodynamic curves, and clean lines not only contribute to its striking visual appeal but also optimize its efficiency and range.

Inside, the Model S offers a minimalist yet sophisticated cabin with a large touchscreen display that controls various vehicle functions. Its emphasis on cutting-edge technology and user-friendly interfaces ensures an engaging and intuitive driving experience [ 5 ].

Influence of Model S's Design on Tesla's Business Success

The design of the Model S has played a significant role in driving Tesla's business success.

By challenging the status quo of traditional automotive design, Tesla captured the imagination of consumers and positioned itself as an industry disruptor.

The Model S's sleek aesthetics and advanced electric powertrain attracted early adopters and environmentally conscious consumers, establishing Tesla as a premium brand in the electric vehicle market. Its innovative design and exceptional performance and range have garnered a loyal customer base, driving Tesla's exponential growth and market value [ 6 ].

Lessons to Learn from Tesla's Product Design Approach

Tesla's product design approach offers valuable lessons for businesses aiming to make an impact. Firstly, integrating sustainability and cutting-edge technology showcases the importance of addressing environmental concerns while delivering exceptional performance.

Secondly, the focus on creating visually appealing and luxurious designs demonstrates the power of evoking desire and emotions in consumers. Lastly, Tesla's commitment to continuous innovation and pushing the boundaries of electric vehicle design highlights the significance of staying ahead of the competition and shaping industry trends [ 7 ].

Studying Tesla's product design approach helps businesses gain insights into the importance of combining sustainability, technology, and aesthetics.

Tesla's success with the Model S exemplifies how groundbreaking design can position a brand as a leader in a competitive market, capturing the hearts and minds of consumers.

Airbnb's Platform and Its UI Design Evolution

Airbnb, the renowned online marketplace for vacation rentals, has significantly evolved its user interface (UI) design. Initially starting as a simple platform, Airbnb recognized the need to enhance its UI to provide a seamless and delightful user experience. Over time, the platform's UI design has evolved, integrating user feedback, market trends, and technological advancements to create a more intuitive and visually appealing interface [ 8 ].

Examination of Airbnb's User Interface Redesign Process

Airbnb's UI redesign process involved a comprehensive analysis of user behavior, pain points, and preferences.

The company conducted extensive research, incorporating user feedback and conducting usability testing to identify areas for improvement.

With a focus on simplicity and clarity, Airbnb refined its UI design, streamlining navigation, enhancing search functionality, and optimizing the booking process. The redesign also aligned the platform's visuals with the aspirations and emotions associated with travel and accommodation [ 9 ].

Positive Impact of UI Redesign on Airbnb's Business Growth

The UI redesign had a profound positive impact on Airbnb's business growth. The enhanced user experience increased engagement, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction.

By making the platform more intuitive and visually appealing, Airbnb attracted a wider user base, including hosts and guests, fostering trust and loyalty.

The positive word-of-mouth generated by the improved UI design further contributed to Airbnb's growth, solidifying its position as a leader in the vacation rental market [ 10 ].

Airbnb's UI design transformation offers valuable insights for businesses seeking to enhance their user experiences. Firstly, a user-centered approach, grounded in research and usability testing, is crucial in identifying pain points and understanding user behavior.

Secondly, simplicity and clarity are key to creating an intuitive and engaging UI design. Lastly, aligning the visual design with the emotional aspects of the platform's purpose can resonate with users on a deeper level, fostering a connection and driving business growth [ 11 ].

By studying Airbnb's UI design transformation, businesses can learn the importance of continuously improving the user experience, leveraging user feedback and data-driven insights.

Slack and Its Focus on User Experience

Slack, the popular communication and collaboration platform, strongly emphasizes user experience (UX). Recognizing that seamless and intuitive interactions are key to productivity and collaboration, Slack has continuously sought to enhance its UX design.

Slack aims to create a platform that fosters efficient communication and teamwork by prioritizing user-centered design principles [ 12 ].

Slack's UX Design Improvements

Slack's UX design journey has involved a series of improvements to optimize the user experience.

The platform has focused on simplifying navigation, streamlining messaging features, and integrating additional functionalities to enhance productivity.

Slack has refined its interface through iterative design updates, ensuring that users can effortlessly navigate channels, search for information, and collaborate effectively within teams. These improvements reflect Slack's commitment to delivering a seamless and enjoyable user experience.

How Enhanced UX Design Contributed to Slack's Business Growth

The enhanced UX design of Slack has played a significant role in its business growth. By creating an intuitive and user-friendly platform, Slack has attracted a large user base and gained a strong foothold in the market.

The improved user experience has increased user engagement, driving higher adoption rates and fostering long-term customer loyalty. The platform's reputation for delivering exceptional UX has been instrumental in Slack's rise as a leading communication and collaboration tool [ 13 ].

Slack's UX design journey offers valuable insights for businesses seeking to enhance their user experiences. Firstly, prioritizing simplicity and ease of use is crucial in creating an intuitive and enjoyable platform.

Secondly, understanding user workflows and pain points enables the identification of areas for improvement. Lastly, consistent iterations and updates based on user feedback and evolving needs are key to delivering a superior UX that drives business growth [ 14 ].

When you study Slack's UX design approach, you learn the importance of user-centric design, continuous improvement, and staying attuned to user needs.

Coca-Cola and Its Packaging Design Legacy

Coca-Cola, a globally recognized beverage brand, has a rich history and a legacy of impactful packaging design. Over the years, Coca-Cola has become synonymous with its iconic red and white packaging, which has left a lasting imprint on consumer culture. The brand's commitment to innovative packaging design has significantly shaped its identity and success in the market [ 15 ].

Coca-Cola's Packaging Redesign Strategy

Coca-Cola's packaging redesign strategy involved carefully analyzing evolving consumer preferences, market trends, and sustainability goals. The brand recognized the need to align its packaging with changing consumer demands and environmental considerations.

Through a thoughtful and meticulous process, Coca-Cola introduced new packaging designs that embraced modern aesthetics, sustainable materials, and personalized options to cater to diverse consumer segments [ 16 ].

Influence of Packaging Redesign on Coca-Cola's Business Success

The packaging redesign efforts of Coca-Cola have had a profound influence on its business success. By refreshing its packaging design, Coca-Cola has connected with new generations of consumers while maintaining its loyal customer base.

The updated designs attracted attention on store shelves and created a sense of novelty and excitement around the brand. This, in turn, led to increased sales, strengthened brand loyalty, and a positive impact on Coca-Cola's overall market share [ 17 ].

Coca-Cola's packaging design approach offers valuable takeaways for businesses aiming to enhance their brand presence and drive business growth. Firstly, recognizing and adapting to changing consumer preferences is essential in staying relevant and capturing new markets.

Secondly, embracing sustainability in packaging design can align a brand with consumer values and contribute to a positive brand image. Lastly, creating personalized packaging options can foster a sense of individuality and strengthen the emotional connection between consumers and the brand [ 18 ].

By studying Coca-Cola's packaging design approach, businesses can gain insights into the importance of continually evaluating and evolving their packaging strategies.

These success stories demonstrate that effective product design goes beyond aesthetics – it encompasses user experience, innovation, and differentiation. By prioritizing product design, businesses can create compelling experiences that captivate their target audience, foster brand loyalty, and propel their growth in the competitive market.

Effective product design is a strategic imperative in today's dynamic business landscape. It is about creating visually appealing products and understanding user needs, solving pain points, and delivering memorable experiences.

By prioritizing product design, businesses can gain a competitive advantage, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive long-term success. Investing in exceptional product design is an investment in your business's future growth and sustainability.

Launch Your Products with Ease at the Brave UX Platform

To help businesses achieve their product design goals, we invite you to engage the Brave UX Platform today. Our platform offers various services and solutions to streamline your design process and deliver exceptional results.

With our agile methodology, you can expect an efficient and collaborative design that ensures timely project completion. Our design services focus on creating exceptional user experiences that engage and impress your target audience.

We specialize in conversion-driven design, maximizing your conversion rates and return on investment.

Through our subscription-based design services, you can enjoy unlimited iteration, make the most of your subscription, engage multiple squads, and have unlimited access to source files.

Our platform provides access to top talent and expertise through our design squad, ensuring you work with the best in the field. We offer industry-focused solutions tailored to your specific sector, understanding your industry's unique challenges and opportunities.

We value partnership and collaboration, working closely with you to bring your vision to life. Sign up at the Brave UX Platform today and unleash the power of effective product design to drive your business growth.

Further Reading:

Product Design vs. Product Development: The Differences Explained Learn about the distinctions between product design and development and how they contribute to successful product creation.

5 Common Product Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them Discover the most common pitfalls in product design and learn practical strategies to avoid them for better design outcomes.

Five Successful Tech Products That Were Made by Mistake Explore the intriguing stories of tech products that unexpectedly became successful and the lessons we can learn from their accidental beginnings.

How Business Analysis And UX/UI Design Collaboration Can Create Better Products Discover the powerful collaboration between business analysis and UX/UI design and how their collaboration can create exceptional products.

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Product Development Process: The Seven Stages Explained

What is product development?

Product development is the method of bringing a new product or service to market.

It involves all the steps right the way through, from initial ideation and research to concept development, prototyping, mass production, distribution strategy, and ultimately market launch .

The development phase of the product lifecycle is a critical one: you can get everything else right, but if the development process is flawed, your SaaS will never be a success.

Product development vs. product management

So what’s the difference between product management and the product development process itself?

In a nutshell:

• Product development describes the process of creating the product itself (i.e. designing screens, writing code, running tests).
• Product management is a broad term covering the overall strategy , vision, market fit, and all involved in ‘building the thing right’.

It’s clear where the product development process sits: it’s a part of product management as a discipline.

Who is involved in the new product development process?

“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” – Phil Jackson

One of the most important things to understand about the product development cycle is that it’s a team sport .

You need a range of disciplines to bring a new product to life:

• Product development team: Your software engineers play an important role. They’ll choose the development framework you use, conduct software development activities (i.e. writing code and unit tests), and use their expertise to guide the rest of the team on technical feasibility).
• Product management team: Product managers set the vision, define a strategy, and build a roadmap that helps focus the team’s efforts. Without those artifacts, the product development lifecycle might lack direction.
• Project management team: The project managers’ job is to make sure development processes run smoothly: organizing resources, keeping track of work, effective process management, and resolving blockers.
• Product design team: Your user-centered design experts will gather early feedback about product concepts and help solve an existing customer problem. They also test the product concept and identify areas for improvement while collaborating with your development teams to bring designs into reality.
• Product marketing team: Communication is key in the marketing team as it will define your marketing strategy, help get messaging right for your target audience, and work with product managers to understand the competitive landscape before launch.
• Product sales team: Your sales team can help you articulate a clear value proposition, and identify your unique selling point.
• Senior management . Connect the work your team is doing with the wider business plan, set the direction, and sign off on key decisions.

What are the seven stages of the product development process?

Next up, we’re going to break down the entire process of bringing an entirely new product idea into reality.

Step 1: Carry out idea generation

“Everything begins with an idea.” – Earl Nightingale

Product managers need something they can bring to the team to start with. There are many ways to generate ideas:

Market research

Competitor analysis can help you quickly figure out if there’s a market need and start to figure out product market fit.

Tools like Google Trends and other industry publications can help point you in the right direction.

Customer requests

There’s no better way of generating ideas than gaining insight into a user’s perspective. Building outlets into your product so existing customers can provide relevant product and feature ideas to you and your development team

Collaboration with cross-functional teams

Customer-facing teams like the sales or customer success teams can share product ideas they’ve picked up from interacting with users.

They’ll be able to make suggestions aligned with your product strategy and serve as a useful ‘idea screening’ stage.

The product marketing team can also help as they continuously conduct market research, so they might know what competitors are focusing on and are well positioned to identify if there’s any market gap.

Having great distribution is a fantastic way to gain a competitive advantage.

Step 2: Perform product validation before the product development process begins

Before your product definition is set in stone, you should stress test it and figure out whether it’s viable . It’s key to the product’s success and helps you avoid the risk of catastrophe (i.e. users hate a concept – or it’s not technically feasible).

There are lots of ways to validate a product idea in this stage of the development process:

• Ask for initial feedback from your target audience via surveys and interviews.
• Generate interest and capture engagement with a fake door test (monitoring clicks on a link to a feature that’s not yet built to gauge demand).

Step 3: Conduct concept development and plan the product roadmap

Once you’ve validated your idea, you should work on concept development .

This stage is all about concept testing to refine your product idea and building a product roadmap .

Alongside a roadmap (which sets out what you’ll focus on now, next, and later – a strategic plan for future iterations of the product) you need a detailed business plan outlining your financial constraints, resources, and other risks.

Planning is an often overlooked part of the production process: without it, your product features won’t be anything more than ideas.

Step 4: Build the minimum viable product (MVP)

Next up is the prototyping phase. You might want to go into a ‘lighter touch’ prototyping stage (i.e. low fidelity mockup) or you could even build a working MVP with basic features.

Put simply, a minimum viable product (MVP) is a version of a product with just enough core functionality to be usable by early customers, who can then provide feedback for future product development.

Your MVP should tackle your user’s main pain points.

This approach means product developers potentially avoid lengthy and (possibly) unnecessary work.

Step 5: Collect customer feedback on MVP and iterate

Next up, you should conduct prototyping/MVP testing to identify potential issues that need to be rectified fast.

User feedback is vital to your product development strategy.

You can test the MVP with a sample of your target market. Alternatively, if you have an existing customer base, you can recruit beta testers in-app. Talking to power users is also a good idea since they regularly use your product.

Testing will answer an important question: how are your product’s unique features performing? Have they landed with potential customers in a new market the way you’d expected they would?

You can then collect customer feedback via interviews/focus groups or a series of in-app surveys.

Remember, the more closely you listen to your target customers, the sharper your competitive edge.

Step 6: Develop the final product

In this step, you write the code to develop the final product.

Remember to analyze the feedback received from beta testing and incorporate it when developing the product – into the manufacturing process of physical products, it’s a chance to refine and avoid defects.

In reality, this is the most crucial element of the development part of the product life cycle: without a working code, you don’t have a product.

Step 7: Launch the product and continuously improve it

You’ve done all the hard work: now it’s about nailing a successful product launch.

Alongside your developers, it’s key for product managers to collaborate with the marketing team to create the go-to-market strategy.

You should be mindful of market conditions and prevailing market trends: if your competitive analysis shows a particular time of year is sensible to launch in, then tailor your launch accordingly.

Once you’ve got your launch over the line, you should continuously gather feedback and monitor product usage data . That’ll give you valuable insight into where to focus your efforts during the next new product development stage.

What are some product development examples?

Of course, how the product development process looks in practice might differ depending on the context.

Let’s explore a couple of examples.

Developing a new CRM software

CRM tools are vital in the world of modern business: managing customer relationships shouldn’t rely on a spreadsheet!

A team looking at developing a CRM might follow the stages above like this:

• Generate ideas based on observations from the sales team on their pain points, frustrations, and requirements.
• Stress test the concepts you’ve come up with by interviewing a few of the sales team and walking through your proposal.
• Prioritize and plan a roadmap of features.
• Build an MVP with the first key bits of functionality (i.e. customer information, document upload, and integration with email, for example).
• Gather feedback from beta users on the MVP.
• Use that insight to define your final MVP (i.e. a user might have issues or suggest changes to a feature you hadn’t considered).
• Launch your CRM, monitor usage, and focus on the highest value improvements (i.e. integrating with sales and marketing integrations).

Building an AI writing assistant feature for a product growth tool

AI is a rapidly growing area: what might the software development process look like for an AI writing assistant:

• Generate ideas for your tool: market research can help you pick a niche.
• A fake door test will give you an indication of whether there’s demand (i.e. people wanting to try your assistive tech out).
• Plan your roadmap: what are you going to focus on now, next, and later?
• Build an MVP of your writing tool – maybe you focus first on one specific range of edits.
• Use that insight to make targeted improvements (i.e. tweaking the language options to make sure they help drive growth).
• Launch your writing assistant, monitor usage , and check performance against KPIs.

Best practices to follow for developing a successful product

The product development process has several underlying principles. Here are some best practices.

Prioritize product ideas that align with business goals

Prioritization is a fundamental skill for PMs: without it, you’ll have to treat everything as a priority.

Choose product ideas based on optimizing for value realized to the business and your users.

There are many frameworks to choose from that can help you make better decisions:

• Value vs effort
• SWOT analysis

Foster cross-functional team collaboration and communication

The beauty of cross-functional teams is that each discipline brings a unique skill set to the table.

Getting developers involved in ideation, designers in planning the launch , and sales input to the roadmap can only improve collaborative outcomes.

Ensure all product development refers to different team members. For example, if you were to involve engineers in your strategic planning, they can provide accurate technical estimates and help set stakeholder expectations.

Follow an agile mindset

Agile teams have a proven track record of delivering valuable outcomes, faster. Teams that build in a ‘waterfall’ style where all requirements are defined up front run the risk of getting off track.

An agile, highly adaptive , user-centric approach will set you and your team up for success.

“Agile is an attitude, not a technique with boundaries.”

Don’t compromise on the quality of the product onboarding

Onboarding is critically important . If you can’t get users to experience value fast from your existing product, the hard work you and the team put into the development process might go to waste.

Product managers should work with the marketing team to orchestrate an effective comms strategy that highlights the unique value proposition, key features, and how users can make the best use of them.

The new product development process is notoriously tricky.

Hopefully, you now feel much better equipped with a firm understanding of the key steps, principles of successful development, and some examples you can draw inspiration from.

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10 Exceptional Product Design Portfolios with Case Study Breakdowns

After working with many designers throughout my own career and helping many more build their job-ready portfolios, there are a few designers that I keep coming back to for inspiration and some that are inspiring a new generation of UI/UX and Product Designers to enter the field.

I've chosen 10 of our favorite UI/UX and Product Designers—a colorful tapestry of digital product architects that have evolved from graphic designers, marketers, architects, engineers and everything in-between. Their unique backgrounds and journey bring something special to our industry and illustrate how we can all do more meaningful, interesting and impactful work:

There are 10 things in particular that make these 10 designers really stand out:

• They have each honed their craft from the bottom up (whether having gone through a traditional academic program, an online course like DesignerUp , or being self-taught).
• They are all at different stages of their careers (some newly minted and others seasoned veterans).
• They continue to learn, grow, push the envelope, document and share their genuine experiences.
• They each hail from a different background (and sometimes non-design industry) that informs who they are and what they work on as a designer.
• Their evolution is apparent in their work.
• They are passionate about the problems they solve and find joy in connecting with the users they serve.
• They are transparent about their processes, thoughtful in their communication about it and not afraid to show what worked and what didn't.
• They have focused portfolios that reveal their unique point of view as a designer.
• They are a diverse group of designers from different cultural, gender and socio-economic backgrounds.
• They have so much to teach us all about design and how to use it to express authenticity and to understand and help others do the same.

Case Study Format:   http://simonpan.com/work/uber/

• The Challenge
• Early Insights
• Reframing the Problem
• The Redesign
• Design Strategy

“In a city as busy as San Francisco, over $1 million was wasted per week because of problematic pickups.”

Madeline Wukusick

Madeline is a graduate of our DesignerUp Product Design course. She was able to create an incredible portfolio working through our curriculum, blended with her background in graphic and data design that set her up for immediate success landing professional design roles.

Case Study Format:

• The Observed Problem
• The Research
• In the Insights
• The proposed How Might We Statements
• Lean Canvas and Product Strategy
• Business Requirements
• The Solutions and MVP Features
• Things that could be improved

"Thanks for helping me work through these iterations—it's been tremendously helpful! You have such a knack for fine-tuning and teasing out subtle themes that I hadn't noticed before. From these comments, I have a better sense of some of my growth areas to work on and ways in which to push myself. It also helped me realize that I am most interested in hybrid roles, or at least roles with a strong visual component. Really grateful to have discovered this course :-)" - Madeline

Not an Italian mobster; Johny Vino is an engineers' designer. I've been a long time admirer of his work every since his mind-blowing animations and micro-interactions arrested me mid Dribbble scroll many years ago. He is a thoughtful, meticulous designer that understands how to align user and business goals all while transmuting conventional interaction patterns into something that is altogether transcendent yet familiar.

Case Study Format: https://johnyvino.com/

Process, Goal and Task Oriented that varies with each project

• What he worked on
• What he aim to accomplish
• Business Goals
• Representation of complex data
• Integration

Humans are not perfect. I like to apply 3 principles to ever product I design to help me focus on that. Fitt's Law, Mimicry, Aesthetic Usability Effect

Steph Parrott

Steph is a product designer based in Toronto. Currently working on Plantd and most recently at Square in San Francisco.

Case Study Format: https://www.stephparrott.com/plantd/

• Roles and Process
• App Overview
• Feature proposal
• Design to Development
• Looking to the future and what's next

"As someone who hasn’t eaten meat in almost 20 years, I’m highly motivated to put in the work to find plant-based options, but for those starting to dabble, how can we except them to do the same?" - Steph

Tom is the co-founder of the community and event series Design Club , and an investor & advisor to Bricklane . He currently works  own clients, helping invent, design, and launch new ventures. Before that he held design leadership roles at fashion and fintech startups, and was as a senior designer at a global agency. Case Study Format: http://tom.pe/gc-dashboard.html

• Summary of the problem space, challenges, project and contribution
• Goal and Problem
• Design Principles applied
• Proposed solution and representation of dashboard and data
• Design frameworks used
• Future considerations

"The problem here is that by trying to create something for everyone, we risked helping no one. Avoiding the design equivelant of an identity crisis became a big focus of mine. I'd do this by finding ways to inject a point of view into the product. By knowing what it wasn't, as well as what it was." - Tom Petty

Want to create an incredible portfolio like these full of amazing case studies to get you hired? Enroll in our Product Design Course today!

Garett MacGillivray

Much like myself and other designers of a particular generation, Aussie/Canadian Garett MacGillivray has been around the block and through the evolution of graphic designer, web design, UI/UX Designers and now landed squarely as a full stack Product Designer.

Case Study Format: https://aucadian.com.au/project/goloop

• Exploration and Ideation
• Component Library
• B2B product interface

I've had many labels throughout my career in the digital industry. It's safe to say that I enjoy crafting digital experiences.

Elise is a Bay Area designer that jumped to the bay from NYU. She comes from an advertising and marketing background and has fine tuned her communication skills and processes vast knowledge of the tech and digital product industry has a whole having been on the broadcasting and marketing side of things.

Case Study Format: http://www.elisefu.com/work-komeeda/

• Impact/Metrics
• User testing
• User research
• Information Architecture
• Implementation
• Major Findings
• Formal User Testing

I was driven to design because I felt excited and rewarding to learn about people’s goals and desires, help them solve problems and make their lives easier.

Latiesha Caston

Latisha is a User Experience Designer passionate about holistic, accessible, and inclusive design, based in Seattle.

Case Study Format: https://www.latieshacaston.com/veggie-grill-online-ordering-experience

• The Problem
• The High-level Goal
• The approach
• Pain Points
• Optimizing flow and improving architecture
• Interaction model breakdown
• Looking to the future

"Our high level goal was to design a holistic order-ahead experience that keeps the core of what we've built, while delivering on opportunities, addressing pain points, and setting the stage for the future." - Latisha

Karolis Kosas

Having recently joined the amazing design team at Stripe as a Product designer, Karolis's portfolio is clean and minimal and his case studies really understand the mental model of the user, getting into their heads and revealing the friction points they are feeling and how he can insert a solution that improves on the experience with compromising the soul of the designer.

Case Study Format: http://karoliskosas.com/cinemaclub/

• prototyping
• Built the product from zero

Visual communication is a self-sufficient organism capable of adapting and evolving based on the input of multiple sources.Acting in such context, the designer is an initiator, establishing methods and boundaries for the system to establish itself as an independent entity.

Rohit Singh

One of o ur very own graduates ! Rohit Singh is an up and coming product designer with a focus on helping early-stage startups and new businesses blossom.

Rohit outlines his process for creating an MVP for his digital product from scratch, which serves as a sort of physical and virtual library for the poorest class of India.

Case Study Format: https://work.khadush.in/booksite-an-online-physical-book-sharing-platform/

• Inspiration
• User Interviews
• Lean Canvas
• Visual Design
• Final Words

I specialize in helping early stage startups validate their riskiest assumptions using leading design methods

After analyzing all of these case studies and working with 100s of designers in our product design course to get them ready for the job application process, we've created our own tried-and-true templates to make it easy for designers to replicate the successful format and structure of these top portfolios using Notion .

Each of these amazing portfolios tells the story of the product designer, their evolution, their process and shows what they bring to the world. But it's not easy doing what they do or knowing exactly how to show and tell who you are as designer. Having a solid design education and getting feedback from the design community is the best way to ensure that your work is up to par and being presented in a way the shows your skills and your worth.

Have a look at our partners' advice over at Pathrise on building a strong UX design portfolio .

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What Are Product Management Case Study Interviews?

Carlos González De Villaumbrosia

Updated: May 6, 2024 - 10 min read

What is a product management case study interview?

A case study interview, also known as a case interview, is a tool used by many companies to assess a candidate’s analytical, creative, and problem-solving skills. Similar to coding interviews for engineers, they allow the interviewers to simulate a situation that allows your skills to be put into practice.

Quite simply, you’ll be given a situation, and asked to make suggestions or come up with a hypothetical solution or improvement.

In product management, this can be about any number of things. The realm of product managers is vast, and covers many different aspects of product development. As product managers sit at the intersection of business, technology, and design, you could be asked case questions under these umbrellas.

This means that you could be given a case question based on product design, monetization, market research, user segmentation, trends, data, technical development, go-to-market , prioritization…pretty much anything product managers are into!

Example case study interview questions

What’s your favorite product? How would you improve its design?

Which company do you think we should acquire next?

How would you go about launching our product in an emerging market, say, India?

What new feature would you build for Instagram?

How to ace a case study interview

The product design case interview

No, the interview isn't going to hand you a Wacom tablet and ask you to mock up an entire product on the spot! Instead, you’ll be asked to think through some solutions to pretty common design problems. Things like:

How would you improve our in-app messenger?

If we tasked you with making our user interface more inclusive of those with disabilities, how would you approach that?

How would you redesign our homepage to make it more appealing for X demographic?

We’re finding that X number of users don’t make it through the entire onboarding process. What would you do/design to fix that?

The key when being asked a question about how you’d improve the company’s product is not to insult it too heavily. Remember, the people who built it are in the room with you, so if you come in hot with “well, for starters, your homescreen is absolutely hideous and needs a complete do-over”, you’re not going to endear yourself to them. A product manager is a diplomat, so be as diplomatic as possible.

Instead of focusing on how you’d fix what you see as glaring problems, try to come up with something that adds to the product. “I think a chatbot in your user onboarding process would help people to navigate through the process. Here’s where I’d implement it…”

How to ace it

Give your hypothesis: Because everything in product starts with why .

Lay out your approach : Briefly summarize what your approach would be, given your hypothesis. Include things like the research you would need to do, and the preparation the team would need to make.

Identify the user: Companies want user-driven product managers, so definitely make sure you know which user you’re building for.

Describe the solution : How would you actually build the solution? No need to get too technical if that’s not where your skills lie. If that’s the case, talk about how you’d lead the engineering teams to build the solution.

Suggest testing: If you’ve got 2 ideas and you’re not sure which one is better, describe both and talk about the test you’d run to discover which one to roll with.

Prioritize features : Show off your prioritization skills if you’re suggesting more than one feature.

Suggest features for an MVP and plans for a V1 launch:

Finish off by helping the interviewers to visualize what the finished MVP would be like, as well as the plans you’d have for a full release later down the line.

The business-thinking case interview

Business thinking is vital for product managers, as you’re the person that ties what’s being built to the needs of the business. This is why you may be presented with a business problem, so that the interviewer can assess your thought process, and how you approach product strategy.

Business case questions may include things like:

Management wants to build X because a competitor has launched something similar. How would you respond?

If we wanted to move more into the B2B market by launching X, what would you do first?

How would you increase customer adoption for the feature we released last month?

We want to become more product-led in our growth strategy. What recommendations would you make in terms of pricing structure/increasing customer adoption?

Establish market characteristics : This is especially important if your case question is a go-to-market question. If you’re not sure what the market characteristics are, talk about what you would find out before starting the work.

Layout your approach: Briefly summarize what your approach would be.

Prioritize your actions: If you’ve been asked for a step-by-step approach, talk about why you’re doing things in that order.

Provide analysis : Business decisions require a heavy amount of analysis, so be sure to include some competitor/customer/market analysis.

Make recommendations: Talk about the end result in a business sense. Instead of getting into the weeds of feature building etc, give a step-by-step approach of how you’d take a new feature to market, or make business-oriented improvements to a product.

Remember that a business-thinking case question requires an answer that would make C-suite happy. Try to think through your answer for the eyes of management. Think about what brings most business value, and tailor your answer around that.

The technical interview

Here, by technical interview, we don’t necessarily mean the tech interviews that engineers can expect to go through. It’s very rare for product managers to be asked technical questions in an interview, unless they’re specifically applying for a technical product manager role. You’ll usually get some warning in advance that your technical prowess will be tested, either by the recruiter or a hiring manager.

The chances of being given an in-depth technical case interview (aka, a coding interview) are rare, so you’re more likely to be asked a few general questions to gauge your technical ability.

Things like:

What’s your experience with X or Y technology?

Do you feel comfortable managing a team of engineers?

Can you explain the most technical project you’ve worked on?

These are questions that you should be able to answer in the room, because they’re based on your direct experience. So you don’t need to put any special level of preparation into their answers.

You may also be asked some technical questions that allow you to show off your technical knowledge, but are open-ended enough that you can still answer even if you’re not very techy. The goal is to gauge how much technical know-how you already have, not to embarrass you and put you on the spot for not having a computer science degree.

These questions might include:

What feature do you think we should build next? How should we approach building it?

Would you build X solution in-house, or would you outsource development elsewhere?

What partners do you think we should integrate with next? (eg. Slack, Trello)

These are questions that you can approach in your own way, from a technical perspective if you come from that background, or from a people-management/design/business perspective if you don’t.

Product managers and tech skills…what’s the deal?

It’s highly unlikely that you’ll be asked to go through a technical interview, as product managers aren’t the ones who physically build the product. They provide the direction and the insights, and the engineers provide the solutions and the finished product. So what’s gained by seeing how well you can code?

Well, some roles are more technical than others, so obviously in these roles you’d need either a computer science degree or a proven record of technical work, like an engineering background.

But for a regular product manager, you’re less likely to be given a technical case interview, and more likely to just be asked a few very general questions to gauge your knowledge.

1. Give yourself time to think

The worst thing you can do is panic, and rush in with an answer. It’s OK to give yourself time to think. An interview is not a first date, and silences don’t have to be awkward! So pause, and give yourself time to consider your answer before you start.

That’s much better than giving a sub-standard answer that you can’t take back. The interviewer will expect you to need a moment to gather your thoughts, so don’t stress.

2. Hack: The McKinsey case study

Now, you’re bound to go off and do plenty more research on case study interviews, wanting to find out everything you can. So let us give you this secret hack: check out materials for McKinsey case interviews .

“But I want to work at Facebook/Google/Amazon!” we hear you say. “Why would I prep for McKinsey?”

McKinsey is one of the most difficult interviewers out there. Reviews by some previous interviewees makes it seem like the process was designed to help choose the next ruler of Westeros. Their standards are incredibly high, and their case interviews are something that people prep weeks, even months in advance for.

This has a double result for you. One, there are swathes of resources out there specifically to prep for this behemoth of a case interview. Two, if you can give a McKinsey-standard answer to a case interview, you’ll outshine the competition easily!

3. Practice ahead of time

While you can’t be totally sure what you’ll be asked in a case interview, you can still prepare.

The smart thing to do is to practice case interview questions ahead of time. The way to do this is to pick apart the job posting you’re interviewing for, and identify what the main responsibilities are.

Case interview preparation is absolutely essential for acing product manager interviews, as you’re bound to be asked a hypothetical question sooner or later in the interview process.

4. Don’t feel pressured to give a perfect answer

Companies know how much time, research, and information goes into making informed product decisions. So if they’ve asked you to propose a new feature for their product as part of your interview, they’re not looking for something they can actually implement from you. They just want to see how you think, and what your analytical and problem-solving skills are. It’s also a test of your communication skills, seeing how you present yourself and your ideas.

So don’t pressure yourself into giving an answer that’s on par with the work their existing product managers do. That’s like beating yourself up for not running as fast a Usain Bolt when you do your first ever 5K.

Prepping for product manager interviews?

We’ve got you covered! Check out these great resources:

Master The Product Manager Interview Playlist : We’ve collected together our best talks on acing the Product Management interview, from a look behind the scenes of recruitment, to how to break into the industry. Check out the entire playlist here , or enjoy this sample from Google’s Product Manager…

The Ultimate List of Product Manager Interview Questions: Prepare yourself for every kind of question you could ever hope to be asked in a product manager interview!

Product School resources: If you really want to deep-dive into the best interview techniques, and become the master of any interview you walk into, you should check out the resources we have in our community. We’ve got cheat sheets, templates, and more!

Hired — How to Get a Great Product Job: Tailored guide-to-go for product manager positions in top tech companies. As this book will show you,  some of the most successful product transitions originated from people in music production or finance, with full-time jobs or with no prior experience. The collection of stories of Product Management transition will show you how it’s done.

Updated: May 6, 2024

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How to Craft Effective Product Experiments

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Experimentation is a powerful tool in product development. When done right, it allows teams to test assumptions, validate ideas, and gather crucial data before fully committing to a feature or change. But what does it take to design an effective experiment? In this blog post, we’ll explore the key steps to crafting product experiments and delve into various techniques you can use to ensure your experiments lead to actionable insights.

Why Crafting Experiments Matters

At the heart of experimentation lies learning. By running structured tests, you can make data-driven decisions and reduce uncertainty in product development. Experiments are particularly useful when:

• You want to validate a new feature or concept.
• You’re unsure how users will respond to changes.
• You’re exploring ways to optimize or enhance an existing product.
• You cannot make a decision for a long time
• You cannot come to an agreement with stakeholders

However, simply running experiments without careful design can lead to flawed results, wasted resources, and incorrect conclusions. That’s why crafting experiments thoughtfully is essential.

Key Steps in Crafting an Effective Experiment

1. Define Your Objective

Before jumping into experimentation, it’s critical to define what you’re trying to learn or achieve. Do you want to validate a new feature idea? Or maybe understand user preferences for a specific function? Being clear about the objective helps ensure that the experiment aligns with your product goals and prevents scope creep. At this stage, it’s also essential to decide if running an experiment is necessary. In some cases, it might be more cost-effective to build and roll out a feature directly rather than run a separate experiment. Experiments cost money too, so it’s important to weigh the cost-benefit carefully.

Example Objective: “We want to increase the number of registered users.”

2. Formulate a Hypothesis

A well-defined hypothesis gives direction to your experiment. A hypothesis should be specific, measurable, and grounded in prior knowledge. It outlines what you expect to happen and serves as a benchmark for analyzing the outcome.

Example Hypothesis: “Changing the button text to ‘Get Started’ will lead to a 15% increase in sign-ups.”

3. Choose the Right Experimentation Technique

Choosing the right technique depends on the kind of insights you’re after. Some techniques are ideal for validating early ideas with minimal investment, while others provide more in-depth user data but require more resources. We’ll explore these techniques below.

4. Identify Metrics and Success Criteria

Experiments need measurable outcomes. Identify the key metrics that will help you determine if the experiment is successful. Your success criteria should be tied to your hypothesis and objective. You need to know how to judge the results objectively without bias before you start.

Example Metrics: Sign-up conversion rate, click-through rate.

5. Design the Experiment

This step involves deciding on the structure and scope of your experiment. You’ll need to determine:

• The sample size (how many users will be part of the experiment).
• The duration (how long you’ll run the experiment).
• The control group (if applicable).
• The variables you’ll test.

For example, if you’re running an A/B test, your control group will see the existing version, while the experiment group will see the new variation.

6. Isolate Variables

It’s essential to control as many variables as possible, so the changes you make are the only factors influencing the results. This can involve randomizing user groups, ensuring representative samples, or eliminating external factors that could skew the data.

7. Run the Experiment

Launch the experiment, monitor it carefully, and make sure that your system is tracking the data correctly. It’s important not to intervene in the middle unless absolutely necessary, as that could introduce bias.

8. Analyze the Results

After the experiment, analyze the results against your success criteria. Look at whether your hypothesis was supported or disproved. Document the findings and evaluate whether further iterations are needed.

9. Learn and Iterate

One experiment often leads to the next. Even if the results weren’t what you expected, they still provide valuable insights. Maybe you noticed something unexpected or uncovered a new insight. Use these findings to craft new experiments, create a new hypothesis or refine the product based on what you’ve learned. The result of a successful experiment can also be a green light on developing an MVP version of a product or feature. Again, experiments cost resources and can negatively impact lead time to actually deliver value.

Different Techniques for Product Experimentation

Now that you understand the general process of crafting an experiment, let’s look at the various techniques you can use depending on your product stage, budget, and the type of insights you seek.

1. A/B Testing (Split Testing)

What it is: A/B testing is a simple yet powerful technique where two versions of a product or feature are tested against each other to see which performs better.

• Best For: Optimizing existing features, testing UI changes, or improving conversion rates.
• Example: Testing two different headlines on a landing page to see which one drives more clicks.

2. Multivariate Testing

What it is: Multivariate testing involves testing multiple variables at once to see how different combinations affect the outcome. It’s more complex than A/B testing but can provide deeper insights.

• Best For: Complex feature optimizations where multiple elements are changing at once (e.g., different combinations of images, headlines, and CTAs).
• Example: Testing various combinations of product images and descriptions to see which combination leads to the most purchases.

3. Usability Testing

What it is: Usability testing involves observing real users as they interact with your product to identify pain points, frustrations, and opportunities for improvement.

• Best For: Understanding user behavior and improving the user experience (UX).
• Example: Watching users navigate your website to identify confusing navigation flows or unclear elements.

4. Paper Prototyping

What it is: A low-fidelity prototype using paper sketches to simulate a digital interface. It’s an excellent early-stage technique to quickly gather feedback without developing anything.

• Best For: Early-stage concept validation, especially for new features or product ideas.
• Example: Presenting a paper version of a new app layout to potential users and gathering their feedback on usability before development.

5. Landing Page Testing

What it is: This technique involves creating a landing page for a product or feature and driving traffic to it to gauge user interest or validate a value proposition.

• Best For: Testing market demand before full product development.
• Example: Building a landing page for a new service offering and measuring sign-up intent before building the service.

6. Wizard of Oz

What it is: In a Wizard of Oz experiment, users interact with what they think is a fully functioning system, but behind the scenes, a person is manually executing the tasks.

• Best For: Testing complex product features that are not fully built yet.
• Example: Presenting a chatbot interface where, instead of AI, a team member responds manually, allowing you to test user interest before developing the actual AI.

7. Concierge MVP

What it is: The Concierge MVP involves offering a service manually rather than through an automated product. It’s used to validate whether users are interested in a feature before you invest in automating it.

• Best For: Validating demand for services or features without developing the tech upfront.
• Example: Manually helping users find product recommendations instead of developing an AI-powered recommendation engine, just to see if users value the service.

8. Pre-Order Page

What it is: A pre-order page gauges interest in a product before it’s available. Users can place an order or sign up to express interest.

• Best For: Testing the demand for a new product or feature without fully developing it.
• Example: Creating a pre-order page for a new gadget to see if there’s enough interest before mass production.

9. Feature fake/Feature stub

What it is: A fake door test involves offering a feature or product on your website or app that doesn’t exist yet. When users click to use it, they’re informed that the feature isn’t available and are invited to leave feedback.

• Best For: Testing demand for a new feature without building it.
• Example: Placing a “Try Our New Feature” button on a website to gauge interest before committing development resources.
• Caution: Excessive use can decrease the product's reputation. Some users might not use the actual feature because they believe it's still a fake.

Experiments are the foundation of evidence based product development. By carefully crafting experiments and choosing the right techniques, you can validate ideas, optimize features, and minimize risk while ensuring you’re building the right product for your users.

Different experimentation techniques allow you to test at various stages of the product lifecycle—from early-stage prototypes to fully developed features. The key is to balance cost, complexity, and insight depth as you move through each phase of development. The more experiments you run, the smarter and more efficient your product evolution becomes.

So whether you’re tweaking a small UI element or exploring a major feature, remember to experiment, measure, learn, and iterate—continuously improving your product with every test.

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How to solve product management case studies

Preparing for a product manager interview can be a daunting task. With case studies being a critical component of the interview process, it's important to strategize and practice ahead of time to showcase your skills effectively. In this comprehensive guide, we'll cover actionable tips to help you ace product manager case study interviews. From key frameworks to avoid common mistakes, you'll gain the confidence and knowledge needed to land your dream PM role. Whether you're just starting your PM career or a seasoned pro, read on to level up your case study interview skills.

Here at The Product Folks , we're all about empowering product managers to grow in their careers. With resources like case study workshop recordings, mock interviews, and dedicated mentors, we're here to help you put your best foot forward in the interview process. Let's dive in!

Overview of the Product Manager Interview Process

A typical PM interview will include multiple stages designed to thoroughly assess your abilities. Here's what to expect:

• Screening call: Discuss your background and interest in the role. Helps align expectations.
• Case studies: Presented with a hypothetical product challenge to analyze and propose solutions for. Tests core critical thinking and prioritization skills. Varies from estimating market size to designing new features.
• Behavioral questions: Queries about your past experiences working on teams, managing stakeholders, handling conflicts etc. Screens for culture fit.
• Technical questions: Assesses your technical knowledge depending on the product domain. More critical for engineering-heavy roles.

Case studies are particularly crucial, as they demonstrate key skills like structuring complex problems, analyzing tradeoffs, and communicating recommendations. Common mistakes include lack of a methodical approach and failure to articulate underlying thought process. Avoid vagueness and guide interviewers through your thinking.

For training tailored to acing PM case interviews, check out The Product Folks' mentor-led masterclasses. Their experts explain how to navigate various types of case studies and equip you with frameworks to tackle them confidently.

Key Strategies for Acing Case Studies

Here are proven strategies to shine in your PM case study interview:

• Research the company: Review their products, customers, domain etc. Helps tailor your approach to their context. For example, studying an ecommerce company's key metrics will allow you to anchor examples and data points in their specifics.
• Clarify the case parameters: Confirm goals, assumptions and constraints. Prevents misalignment. Ask clarifying questions upfront to avoid veering off track.
• Structure with frameworks: Use templates like PRD format to organize thinking. Keeps it methodical. Outlining stakeholders, requirements and success metrics provides systematic analysis.
• Show your work: Verbalize your analysis to demonstrate thought process. Explains rationale. Walk through each consideration instead of simply stating conclusions.
• Practice aloud: Helps get comfortable articulating complex ideas. Improves narrative flow. The Product Folks mock interviews are great for rehearsing with real-time feedback.

Walking through an example case study is invaluable for internalizing these key strategies in action:

Example Case Study #1 - Food Delivery App

Let's imagine we're the PM for Swiggy, a food delivery app in India. The CEO wants to grow monthly active users (MAU) by 30% this quarter. Here's how I'd approach this case:

First, I'd propose features that provide more value to users:

• Loyalty program : Points for orders that unlock free delivery and discounts. Improves retention.
• Package deals : Meal combos from multiple restaurants at a bundled price. Increases order value.

Next, I'd consider options to improve new user onboarding:

• Free delivery trial : First 3 orders free delivery to hook new users. Lowers barrier to signup.
• Referral bonus : Users earn credits for referrals. Virality leverages network effects.

Comparing the options, I'd recommend prioritizing the loyalty program for the highest ROI. It targets our core goal of increasing MAU by incentivizing repeat orders. According to Swiggy's metrics, existing users drive 80% of orders, so loyalty has the biggest leverage. The referral bonus is more speculative and might require substantial promo budget.

Key risks include existing users thinning order frequency to earn points. We'd need to analyze optimal program tiers and rewards, likely by running A/B tests. Overall, the loyalty program combines high impact on KPIs with ease of implementation. For execution, I'd pilot in Bangalore and Hyderabad first, tracking engagement data to refine the nationwide rollout.

This showcases weighing alternatives against goals, evaluating feasibility and mapping execution steps - all critical PM case study skills. Let's break down another example next.

Example Case Study #2 - Social Media Platform

Imagine we're PMs at Facebook. Engagement from teenagers in the US has dropped 30% this quarter. How can we turn this around?

I'd start by auditing their core needs - sense of identity and community. Some potential solutions:

• Interest-based groups : Connects users with niche interests. Provides targeted sense of belonging.
• Ephemeral content : Stories, polls that disappear after 24 hrs. Creates constant activity.
• Rewards program : Points and badges for engagement milestones. Gamification taps into motivation.

Evaluating the options, interest-based groups seem most promising. While ephemeral content may spike engagement short-term, it likely won't address the root identity needs long-term. Groups are scalable and tap directly into the teenage affinity for communities.

I'd propose a pilot targeting groups around hobbies, causes etc. Success would see group engagement exceed overall platform averages for the teen demographic. Risks include bullying in unmoderated groups. We'd need community guidelines, reporting mechanisms and moderation.

Overall, this matches an audience need with a targeted solution grounded in behavioral data. We walked through ideating options tailored to goals, analyzing feasibility and defining metrics to track outcomes. These frameworks are key for structuring strategic thinking during case interviews.

Key Learnings and Takeaways

Let's recap the core strategies we covered for tackling PM case studies:

• Research the role and company to frame your approach
• Clarify the objectives, constraints early
• Organize analysis using frameworks
• Explain your thinking to demonstrate logic
• Practice case studies regularly to build skills

Avoiding vague responses and clearly articulating your thought process are critical. Use examples and data to back recommendations. Structure your thinking with proven frameworks.

For further practice with feedback from experts, check out The Product Folks' mock case study interviews. Their dedicated mentors can help take your skills to the next level.

Latest Posts

This article will explore how product management side projects can catalyze professional development by allowing you to experiment with new methodologies and enhance your skillset.

This comprehensive guide promises to equip you with a structured approach to tackling product case studies. You'll gain frameworks to methodically analyze prompts and craft insightful solutions.

Through real-world application, valuable feedback, and community engagement with groups like The Product Folks, PMs can significantly accelerate their skill development and expertise in the dynamic field of product management.

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InfoQ Homepage Articles Building Better Platforms with Empathy: Case Studies and Counter-Examples

Building Better Platforms with Empathy: Case Studies and Counter-Examples

Sep 23, 2024 9 min read

David Stenglein

reviewed by

Aditya Kulkarni

Key Takeaways

• Empathy is the ability to see experiences from someone else's perspective, sharing their emotions (positive or negative) based on understanding their experience, unlike sympathy which focuses on acknowledging distress.
• Organizations adopt platforms to manage the increasing complexity of growth, which strains the DevOps model as security, compliance, performance, and other operational demands create an overwhelming cognitive load on developers.
• Building your platform as a product promotes a customer-centric approach. We recognise that internal users have choices and may resort to shadow IT if the platform doesn't meet their needs.
• Building a culture of empathy, modeled through open communication and active listening, empowers you to understand users' true needs and fosters leadership from all levels of the organization.
• The DevEx framework helps identify key areas for platform improvement by focusing on the interconnected elements of feedback loops, cognitive load, and flow state, ultimately addressing user pain points.

When it comes to platform development, achieving scale often involves absorbing excess cognitive burdens into the platform's framework. An important aspect of constructing these platforms lies in fostering empathy. Rather than viewing individuals only through the lens of their issues, it's imperative to recognize them as people. Focusing on more than just specific issues can narrow down solutions unnecessarily. But, taking time to listen and understand diverse challenges leads to better results.

At my QCon San Francisco 2023 presentation, I emphasized the importance of integrating empathy into platform development.

Drawing Lessons from a Costly Error

After securing stakeholder approval, we embarked on a project to extend a cloud-native platform (that we had originally built), leveraging the robust Netflix stack with its blue-green deployments and relevant tools. We set out with a goal to address current usability issues with the platform.

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Confident in our understanding of the platform's needs, we dove into the development. However, as we began demoing the new functionality to users — who were different from the project's stakeholders — we encountered negative feedback. Despite repeated iterations and demonstrations, it became increasingly clear that a significant gap existed between user expectations and our development direction.

Eventually we realized that users would never adopt what we were building and the project was cancelled. A sizeable budget had been spent with no return. What had begun as a well-intentioned attempt to empower teams ended in disappointment, highlighting the contrast between our hypothesis and the users' reality.

In hindsight, we recognized the critical oversight of not considering user perspectives. Our assumption of alignment proved incorrect, highlighting the importance of genuine user engagement and feedback in guiding successful project outcomes.

Significance of Empathy

Let's distinguish between empathy and sympathy. Sympathy involves reacting to someone in distress without necessarily understanding their perspective. Empathy, on the other hand, means understanding experiences from another person's viewpoint.

It's crucial to differentiate empathy from sympathy, as sympathy merely involves acknowledging negative emotions or feeling distress when witnessing someone else's suffering. For instance, the image below might evoke empathy in individuals who have experience with server rooms, allowing them to understand what the person shown below is going through. Empathy extends beyond negative emotions; it can also involve sharing in someone else's excitement or joy.

Empathy has its do's and don'ts.

First, listen without immediately jumping to solutions — which is a challenge with many technical-minded individuals. Instead of assuming and solving, ask probing questions to understand the person's experience and needs better.

Practice active listening by asking open-ended questions that uncover core issues and pains. Embrace vulnerability by admitting what you don't know, rather than rushing to demonstrate capability. Avoid the urge to explain why someone's approach is wrong; this can make the person feel isolated rather than empathized. Similarly, refrain from minimizing concerns; comparing their experience won't foster empathy or understanding.

Why do we build platforms?

Organizations adopt platforms to streamline operations when expansion leads to complexity. DevOps culture encouraged engineers to take ownership, improving speed by removing bottlenecks from the other teams. However, as companies grow, the demands of security, compliance, performance, and other factors create a cognitive load.

Cognitive load is a topic studied in academic research. It investigates how the difficulty of a learning task affects people. The right balance of cognitive load helps a person better absorb new information in a learning environment. This idea has also been applied to understand workplace tasks. NASA has an interesting concept called mental workload, developed during the shuttle program. This concept builds upon the idea of cognitive load by adding in the impact of deadlines, environmental factors, and other stressors that we can sometimes face.

Cognitive load has three primary components. Intrinsic cognitive load describes the underlying complexity of the task at hand – like figuring out your route to the supermarket and the act of driving itself. Germane cognitive load represents the knowledge and skills you need for the task – having a driver's license and knowing how to operate a car. Finally, extraneous cognitive load encompasses distractions that hinder your focus – such as unexpected traffic or detours that force you to adjust your route.

At an enterprise level, when too many people are involved in too many processes, extraneous cognitive load increases exponentially. This leads to lower overall organizational efficiency. Platforms achieve scale by absorbing much of this extraneous cognitive load. They either directly capture work, eliminating the need for users to do it, or significantly simplify it through abstraction. For any remaining tasks that can't be fully eliminated, platforms strive to make them as easy as possible for users to interact with.

Building your platform as a product makes sense for several reasons that align with a customer-focused mindset. Products have customers, and customers have options. This differs from how we typically treat internal tools. However, we've seen situations where internal customers reject what's provided, opting to use their resources to purchase solutions elsewhere – giving rise to shadow IT.

Building a Platform That Delivers Results

By treating your platform as a product, you prioritize making it the best solution. This is crucial, as the alternative (users refusing to migrate or adopt your platform) is equally undesirable. A non-compelling platform can simply become another layer in the company's growing tech stack, failing to solve real user problems. It may linger without being officially canceled, ultimately contributing to the company's tech debt rather than providing value.

The old approach was highly transactional. Users would submit requests through a ticketing system – asking for a specific feature or a change to the build system. We'd either try to incorporate these requests into the platform directly or figure out ways to automate them to handle the volume. Unfortunately, this old method resulted in limited understanding and empathy due to its reactive nature.

Platform engineering centers around building for others, not yourself. This marks a fundamental mindset shift compared to traditional systems administration. Sysadmins and even DevOps engineers focused on maintaining and modifying the shared components of a system. In contrast, platform engineering teams build a self-service product for others to utilize. The new focus is on creating an appealing product, which requires understanding your users' needs. By employing empathy and stepping into your users' shoes, you'll be far more successful than simply offering solutions based on assumptions about their requirements.

This approach offers significant benefits. By focusing on building what users actually need, based on their direct feedback, you optimize the use of company resources. For example, if you develop five features but only two are truly valuable to internal customers, the remaining three represent wasted effort and contribute to tech debt. However, if all five features are genuinely useful to engineering teams, you'll significantly boost their effectiveness. This approach leads to accelerated growth and, likely, much higher employee satisfaction.

Much of developer experience focuses on satisfaction, and for good reason. By understanding user needs, building solutions for them, and actively eliminating their pain points, you naturally create happier engineers. This sets up a virtuous cycle: start by identifying what users need and then build it – they will adopt it. This increases overall company efficiency and effectiveness, further increasing user satisfaction. The cycle continues. Alternatively, if you build something without this approach and expect adoption, the cycle stalls if users don't engage. You've inadvertently hindered the company's potential for greater efficiency and created a roadblock to this positive cycle.

Leveraging Empathy for Results

To use empathy when building platforms, you need to create a culture of empathy. Since we're dealing with human emotions, establishing a cultural foundation is crucial. This means actively encouraging everyone to practice listening – focusing on understanding others rather than immediately formulating a response. Additionally, it's important to get to know coworkers and customers as individuals. Building these connections makes it easier to step into their shoes, shadow them, and understand their experiences – all of which are essential for building with empathy.

From a product perspective, building a culture of empathy empowers you to have honest conversations with users about their true needs, going beyond mere requests. This starts with modeling the desired behavior yourself. By actively demonstrating this approach with both coworkers and customers, you set an example for others to follow. Remember, leadership can come from any level of the organization – you don't need a managerial title to showcase these principles.

Use Product Management practices to deeply understand your users, their pain points, and the solutions they need. These techniques are equally beneficial when building internal platforms. For example, surveys can be beneficial to acquire subjective data. To grasp someone's perspective, you need to understand how they feel about the system – not just measure deployment frequency or other objective metrics. Survey your users directly, asking questions like "Do you feel you're as effective as you could be?" This type of feedback is surprisingly valuable for platform development.

The DevEx framework also offers a powerful way to identify crucial improvement areas and ask the right questions about how your platform can address user pain points. This is because its elements – feedback loops, cognitive load, and flow state – are deeply intertwined. For example, if slow build times disrupt feedback loops, addressing that directly will help users stay in a flow state for longer. Similarly, if you streamline deployment options, reducing the complexity within AWS, you lower cognitive load and boost efficiency. The emphasis on flow state is vital – the longer users remain focused and productive, the more value they generate for the company.

I believe that any organization benefits greatly from having software engineers join the platform engineering team. This diversity of perspectives is crucial for ensuring the team builds the right solutions and truly satisfies its internal customers. At the same time, platform engineers should actively work alongside their customer teams – the developers – to gain a firsthand understanding of their day-to-day experience. This reciprocal approach fosters a deeper understanding of both sides.

Empathy means seeing people first, not just problems. By connecting with the person, you open yourself to a wider range of solutions. Focusing solely on fixing a specific issue prematurely limits your options. Taking the time to actively listen and understand the person and their broader challenges will ultimately lead to much more effective solutions.

Always remember your target audience: you're not building for yourself. As a platform team crafting a product, you're building for your customers. Keeping this mindset at the forefront will guide you towards addressing their needs. Much of what we discussed in this article is actionable on a personal level – integrating product management techniques, etc. But if you're part of a platform team, you can start making a difference right away. Focus on active listening and resist offering immediate solutions.

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A methodological framework for new product development in fuzzy environments.

1. Introduction

2. materials and methods, 2.1. kano model.

• Must-be attributes ( M ): These are also called necessary attributes; these are the characteristics of a product/service which customers take for granted. When the attribute in product/service is present, the customer will likely feel neutral; however, if these attributes are missing, the customer will be very dissatisfied.
• One-dimensional attributes ( O ): These are also called linear attributes. When the attribute is absent from the product/service, customer satisfaction is low; when it is present, customer satisfaction is high.
• Attractive attributes ( A ): These attributes are not expected by the customer; however, their presence increases customer satisfaction substantially.
• Indifferent attributes ( I ): Whether these attributes are present or not, customer satisfaction remains unaffected.
• Reverse attributes ( R ): These are also called inverse attributes. When these attributes are present, customer satisfaction will decrease.
• Questionable ( Q ): These are also called invalid attributes, which means that the customer’s answer to the Kano questionnaire was nonsensical or the question was worded incorrectly. Note that this attribute may not only mean incorrect wording but may point to more meanings of the question, and therefore, it is necessary to discuss this question with the respondents to find the root cause of this answer.

2.2. Fuzzy Axiomatic Design

3. proposed methodological framework for new product development, 3.1. mixed-class classification method, 3.2. new importance ratio for attributes, 3.3. proposed procedure, 4.1. implementation and computation, 4.2. comparative analysis, 4.3. sensitivity analysis, 4.4. discussion, 5. conclusions, author contributions, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Yang, C.-M.; Li, S.; Chen, K.-S.; Li, M.; Lo, W. A Methodological Framework for New Product Development in Fuzzy Environments. Systems 2024 , 12 , 382. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems12090382

Yang C-M, Li S, Chen K-S, Li M, Lo W. A Methodological Framework for New Product Development in Fuzzy Environments. Systems . 2024; 12(9):382. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems12090382

Yang, Chun-Ming, Shiyao Li, Kuen-Suan Chen, Mingyuan Li, and Wei Lo. 2024. "A Methodological Framework for New Product Development in Fuzzy Environments" Systems 12, no. 9: 382. https://doi.org/10.3390/systems12090382

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Research Article

‘Our project, your problem?’ A case study of the WHO’s mRNA technology transfer programme in South Africa

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Supervision, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliations Faculty of Medicine, Department of Pharmacology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, Health Justice Institute, Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada

Roles Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

Affiliations Program of Ethics, Politics and Economics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America, Information Society Project, Yale Law School, New Haven, Connecticut, United States of America

• Matthew Herder, 
• Ximena Benavides

• Published: September 23, 2024
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003173
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

In June 2021 the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP) launched an mRNA technology transfer programme. With a South African consortium serving as the hub, the programme aimed to increase vaccine manufacturing capacity in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) in view of the “vaccine apartheid” that was observed during COVID-19. Following Clarke’s “situational analysis,” the present study assessed whether the mRNA programme differs from the approach and practices that comprise current biopharmaceutical production. Numerous documentary sources, including legal agreements underpinning the programme, funding agreements, and patent filings, were reviewed. Semi-structured interviews with 35 individuals, ranging from the programme’s architects and university scientists to representatives from LMIC vaccine manufacturers taking part in the programme were also conducted. While the mRNA programme may improve the sharing of knowledge, other design features, in particular, weak conditionalities around product affordability, participants’ freedom to contract with third parties, and acceptance of market-based competition, are in line with the status quo. Further, WHO and MPP’s tight control over the programme evokes the dynamics that are often in play in global health, to the detriment of empowering LMIC-based manufacturers to generate mRNA products in response to local health needs.

Citation: Herder M, Benavides X (2024) ‘Our project, your problem?’ A case study of the WHO’s mRNA technology transfer programme in South Africa. PLOS Glob Public Health 4(9): e0003173. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003173

Editor: Roojin Habibi, University of Ottawa Faculty of Law - Common Law, CANADA

Received: February 7, 2024; Accepted: August 22, 2024; Published: September 23, 2024

Copyright: © 2024 Herder, Benavides. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: In order to preserve the confidentiality of people who participated in this research, but do not wish their identities to be disclosed we are unable to share interview transcripts in their entirety. The research ethics board at Dalhousie University approved this research provided that participants' identities would remain confidential. Inquiries about data availability related to this project can be sent to [email protected] .

Funding: One author (MH) holds a Chair in Applied Public Health, funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) and Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). This Chair carries a salary award as well as funding for research activities. However, neither CIHR nor PHAC played any role whatsoever in the design of the present study, data collection, analysis or writing process.

Competing interests: We have read the journal’s policy and the authors of this manuscript have the following competing interests: Matthew Herder was a member of the Patented Medicine Prices Review Board (PMPRB), Canada’s national drug pricing regulator, and received honoraria for his public service, June 2018 – February 2023. The PMPRB had no role whatsoever in the design or conduct of this research. Ximena Benavides worked for GAVI - The Vaccine Alliance, COVAX Facility, from May to October of 2021, as a Yale Institute for Global Health fellow.

Introduction

In June 2021 Afrigen Biologics, a for-profit company based in Cape Town, South Africa set out to change the global landscape of biopharmaceutical production. Chosen by the World Health Organization (WHO) to serve as the hub of an mRNA technology transfer programme, Afrigen’s initial task was to make an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 and distribute the technology to manufacturers located in other low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The motivation was plain: established makers of COVID-19 vaccines, especially mRNA vaccines, had largely neglected populations in LMICs [ 1 , 2 ]. In view of that “vaccine apartheid,”[ 3 ] building capacity to make vaccines locally for local populations became imperative. The WHO turned to a model of knowledge-sharing that was previously deployed in response to concerns that the global influenza virus sharing network was under-serving people in LMICS [ 4 – 6 ]. Another Geneva-based organization, the Medicines Patent Pool (MPP), was charged with managing the mRNA programme’s fundraising and legal needs.

Within six months Afrigen succeeded in producing its own mRNA COVID-19 candidate, “AfriVac 2121 [ 7 ].”. The programme has the potential to be transformative as a model of vaccine production [ 8 ], encompassing both upstream research and development (R&D) and ‘end-to-end’ vaccine manufacturing. Still, the initiative faces several risks, including precarious levels of funding, the looming threat of patent litigation by established mRNA vaccine manufacturers, and a range of governance issues that have complicated the work of an organization created out of dire need—all the while trying to develop the technical capacity to produce high-quality mRNA-based technologies that protect against not only COVID-19 but also tuberculosis (TB), malaria, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and other diseases that disproportionately afflict people in LMICs.

We set out to study, using qualitative research methods, to what extent the WHO/MPP-managed mRNA programme differs from the approach and practices that comprise current biopharmaceutical production. We describe the key features of the status quo as a basis for comparison with the mRNA programme under our findings below. Combining insights from documentary sources, including the legal architecture underpinning the programme, patent filings related to mRNA products, and data from semi-structured interviews with 35 individuals involved in the programme, we find that the design of this initiative is largely in line with dominant approaches to vaccine production, steeped in the neocolonial dynamics that are often in play in the sphere of global health [ 9 – 14 ], and at risk of failing to enhance equitable access even if it ultimately succeeds in one day making mRNA vaccines.

A ‘situational analysis’ of the mRNA programme amidst global power imbalances

Our research followed a “situational analysis” approach—a form of grounded theory, which develops theories through observations and multiple sources of data [ 15 ]. Under situational analysis, data collection and analysis occur in parallel, requiring constant comparison between new sources of data and the preliminary, but evolving, analysis. We describe the multiple sources of data incorporated into our situational analysis below, which has been applied by social scientists to gain insight into complex systems, comprising a variety of actors with diverging interests [ 16 , 17 ]. At the same time, we were cognizant of the power imbalances that afflict global health from the study’s inception [ 13 , 18 – 21 ]. Attention to power differences among the variety of actors and institutions engaged in the mRNA programme, and the multiple drivers of power imbalances, was central to our data collection and analysis.

Document analysis

Multiple types of documents were analyzed by both researchers; a few minor inconsistencies in interpretation occurred but were resolved through discussion. The first type of document was a range of legal documents that codify the relationships between different actors in the mRNA programme, which, pursuant to a memorandum of understanding, the WHO tasked MPP with drafting and implementing. These “programme agreements [ 22 ]” are in place between MPP and the three principal members of the South African “consortium”, that is, Afrigen, another Cape Town-based vaccine manufacturer called Biovac, and the South African Medical Research Council (SAMRC). The “technology transfer template agreement,” which served as the basis for negotiations with LMIC manufacturer partners to the hub, as well as the finalized agreements between MPP and thirteen of the fifteen programme “partners” that have signed a technology transfer agreement, all of which are publicly available from MPP’s website (accessed: March 30, 2024), were also analyzed. (Only Bio-Manguinhos (Brazil) and BiovaX (Kenya) have not signed such an agreement). Additionally, research agreements shared by interview participants were analyzed, including a funding agreement between scientists at the University of Cape Town and the SAMRC, a research collaboration agreement between the United States’ (US) National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)) and Afrigen, as well as sample clauses from Afrigen’s collaboration agreements with entities outside the programme. Powerpoint presentations and other information shared at the programme’s inaugural meeting held in Cape Town, April 17–21, 2023, as well as a regional meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, October 31 –November 1, 2023 were also incorporated into the study. To gain insight into the relationship between countries sponsoring the programme and WHO/MPP, an access to information (ATI) request was filed with the Canadian government, which is the second highest funder of the mRNA programme. Our ATI request yielded 153 pages of correspondence, agreements, and other documentation that we incorporated into our analysis. ( see S1 Letter and S1 Document for further details about our request and the corresponding disclosure package) Finally, a dataset of patent applications as well as withdrawn and granted patents, compiled and made publicly available by MPP [ 23 ] was analyzed to understand the evolving patent landscape related to mRNA technologies in South Africa and other LMICs tied to the programme.

Semi-structured interviews

We used a purposive sampling strategy, contacting individuals that hold leadership positions within their respective organizations or who have relevant experience, for example, in a relevant scientific field. Within the consortium (n = 12), we interviewed executives of Afrigen (3) and Biovac (1), as well as officials from SAMRC and other parts of the South African government (3), and university-based scientists (5). We also interviewed WHO (3) and MPP (4) officials, which we refer to as the ‘programme’s architects’ (n = 7), and representatives from vaccine manufacturers based in Argentina (2), Brazil (2), Serbia (1), India (1), Bangladesh (2), and another LMIC (2), which are now described as programme partners (n = 10). Finally, we interviewed scientists from the global North and other outside experts, businesses, and organizations (n = 6) that have supported or taken part in the programme in some fashion or work in the field of epidemic preparedness. Only one individual (of 36 that we contacted) declined to participate in an interview. The majority of interview participants (29 of 35 that chose to participate) agreed to be interviewed ‘on the record’, allowing quotations to be attributed to them by name. ( Table 1 ) One researcher (MH) traveled to Geneva, Cape Town, Chicago, and Bangkok to recruit and run interviews in person (n = 16). Nineteen interviews took place virtually and usually involved both researchers (MH, XB).

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003173.t001

Research ethics statement

We received ethics approval to conduct this study from Dalhousie University’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Ethics Board (REB# 2022–6457) and Yale University’s Institutional Review Board (IRB#2000034524). After discussing the purpose, benefits and risks associated with our research, all individuals we interviewed provided verbal consent to participate in the study at the outset of each interview. Consent was thus recorded as part of each interview transcript. All interviews occurred between February 2023 and January 2024.

Data coding and analysis

Consistent with situational analysis, data collection and analysis occurred in parallel. We created memos summarizing key exchanges or text, interpreting both interview and documentary data to identify lines of inquiry and points to follow up during future interviews. MH and XB generated a list of concept areas, in turn, developing a set of situational maps to define relationships between all the entities involved in the mRNA programme as well as key dynamics (e.g., influence of funding organizations; competing institutional priorities) that are often operative in the field of global health and access to medicines. We followed a constant comparative method throughout our research process, and met regularly to discuss uncertainties, unresolved questions, and points of divergence among interview participants.

Review by independent equity advisory committee

Our research process, data analysis, and preliminary findings were developed in consultation with an Independent Equity Advisory Committee (IEAC). Comprised of six members with diverse expertise in clinical trials, global health policy, access to medicines, and bioethics, the IEAC has extensive experience working with or inside organizations, such as WHO, the South Centre, Universities Allied for Essential Medicines, Médecins Sans Frontières, and the Health Justice Initiative. While the IEAC had no direct involvement in data collection, access to interview data, or control over our analysis, it played an essential role in helping to identify potential participants and critically appraising our preliminary findings and, at bottom, ensuring that our approach was attentive to the larger social and political context in which our research is situated.

We first examine the mRNA programme’s origins (2020–2021) and then compare its design to the four paradigmatic features of global biopharmaceutical production, which we abstracted from a review of literature and evidence from numerous scholarly disciplines; namely, 1) weak conditionalities attached to publicly funded science; 2) secret, transactional R&D partnerships; 3) a high degree of financialization; and, 4) market-based governance. Below, we elaborate upon, and juxtapose these four features against, our findings about the mRNA programme following an examination of the political context and policy choices that were made early on during the pandemic yet, as we show, continue to constrain the programme’s approach and practices.

Politicized origins: Building the mRNA technology transfer programme

Foreseeing access challenges from the start of the pandemic [ 2 , 24 , 25 ], WHO became home to several attempts to improve access to COVID-19 vaccines and other needed interventions in LMICs. Each differed markedly in terms of their approach to mitigating access challenges and the actors involved. The first, the “Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator” (ACT-A), was launched in April 2020 by a mix of public and private actors, including WHO, the government of France, the European Commission, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and three biopharmaceutical industry associations [ 25 ]. The vaccine-focused arm of ACT-A, COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access or “COVAX” (governed by Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), and WHO), was intended to procure vaccines for LMICs by leveraging the collective purchasing power of high-income countries (HICs). With HICs prioritizing domestic populations at the expense of equitable global distribution, however, COVAX’s charitable approach failed to secure vaccines for LMICs [ 26 – 28 ]. A second initiative, the COVID-19 Technology Access Pool (C-TAP), created by WHO, the government of Costa Rica, and other member states, followed in May 2020 [ 29 ]. In contrast to ACT-A’s charity-based approach, C-TAP sought to distribute control of the intellectual property (IP), data, and knowledge related to COVID-19 interventions. Pooling a variety of technologies through voluntary licenses, vaccine and other product manufacturers could in-license technologies to address population needs in LMICs [ 30 ] rather than depending on vaccine donations from HICs—a move applauded by civil society but fiercely contested by industry, its allies, and the Gates Foundation [ 31 , 32 ].

Meanwhile, individuals inside and adjacent to WHO began crafting a third proposal, predicated on building capacity to manufacture vaccines in LMICs for LMICs. Martin Friede, the WHO’s lead coordinator for vaccine research, and Marie-Paule Kieny, the Chair of MPP’s Governance Board and formerly an Assistant Director-General at WHO were especially influential. Drawing upon a “hub and spoke” model of vaccine manufacturing that WHO deployed once before [ 5 , 33 , 34 ], they envisioned a centralized knowledge sharing system with a view to enhancing local vaccine production capacity in LMICs. Friede recalls how they arrived at this model in the context of influenza vaccines:

[I]t was very easy finding experts in terms of the vaccines because the world is full of retired people used to making influenza vaccines, but […] we realized these were generally quite old gentlemen and they got very tired going around the world teaching the same process at each facility […]. And this is when the concept was born of us creating a central hub, again, a corporate direction of interest. (MF)

Several crucial questions about the design of the model, in the context of COVID-19, nevertheless remained: How would it fit within WHO and the organization’s other newly launched COVID-19 access initiatives? Who would oversee its operations? Would there be one central hub or several spread across different regions? What vaccine platform(s) should command its focus for technology transfer purposes?

According to the lead of WHO’s IP Unit, Erika Dueñas Loayza, the original plan was to embed the COVID-19 hub within C-TAP. On behalf of WHO, Loayza’s team was actively seeking voluntary licenses from COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers.(EDL) Any new IP generated by the hub or its spokes would in turn become part of C-TAP’s pool, thus distributing control to LMIC-based manufacturers as their productive capacity increased. However, as industry opposition to C-TAP grew because of the threat that it posed to IP-holders’ control over COVID-19 interventions [ 32 ], then-WHO assistant director general (ADG) of access to medicines and health products, Dr. Mariângela Simão, and then-WHO Chief Scientist Dr. Soumya Swaminathan opted to “move the mRNA [programme] away from C-TAP to the ACT-[Accelerator]”—an outcome that MPP’s Kieny also favoured.(EDL) Although CEPI was the nominal lead for the “development and manufacturing” workstream within COVAX [ 25 ], it was the Kieny-led MPP that would later assume, in concert with WHO, responsibility for the design, day-to-day oversight, and fundraising for the hub.(CG)

Once positioned inside ACT-A, WHO issued a call for expressions of interest for “one or more” technology transfer hubs in April 2021 [ 35 ]. Afrigen’s chief executive Petro Terblanche remembers recognizing the opportunity: “We are small, but we know tech transfer.”(PT) Terblanche’s strategy of assembling a “consortium” together with Biovac and SAMRC for the WHO application proved wise. Friede describes the decision-making process inside WHO, which culminated in the selection of the Afrigen-led proposal on July 21, 2021:

[T]he WHO’s PDVAC, which is the production and development of vaccines advisory committee, decided that mRNA was the first platform to go for first because of its flexibility, potentially lower cost, and speed with which you could look at different antigens and whether they work or not. […] Then WHO put out a call for expressions of interest to be the hub initially, and a number of companies applied. South Africa came with a consortium, which is the only one that did come with a consortium, consisting of Afrigen as the hub, Biovac as the first spoke and the South African Medical Research Council as the research institute to feed into potentially new pathogens, potentially second-generation technologies and so on. And so that was attractive because they came as a consortium, and clearly also the fact that it was in Africa was attractive to them because Africa was the standout continent of inequity and access.(MF)

Brazil’s Bio-Manguinhos, a non-profit, state-owned company that is part of the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, submitted a competing bid. Their proposal contemplated building ‘end-to-end’ mRNA manufacturing capacity, that is, the complete production process—from antigen design to producing the drug substance, drug product, and the fill and finish phase of inputting doses into vials—and then transferring the know-how from one LMIC manufacturer to another.(PN) Sotiris Missailidis, then head of vaccine innovation at Bio-Manguinhos, details how things shifted in the months that followed the Afrigen announcement in June 2021:

Africa was announced first, but I think it’s important to say that, in the beginning, at least, what we had understood […] was that the model was going to be a decentralized model. So there were going to be two hubs in Africa [and] there were going to be two hubs, regional hubs in Latin America. There were going to be two regional hubs in Asia. […] And each of them then would have spokes, potentially, that would be partners that had an interest in producing and accepting the technology. So we applied to be original hub. We didn’t apply to be a spoke, ever. And we got selected. […] What I didn’t know was that, at some stage, […] there was a decision taken from WHO or whoever, that as there was increasing political and financial pressure, many people wanted to come in. […] So the decision was taken to have one central hub and everybody else would be spokes.(SM)

It remains unclear why the change in plans occurred. Bio-Manguinhos learned of their ‘spoke status’ when they visited Afrigen in April 2022—six months after WHO indicated they would be a regional hub.(SM,PN) [ 36 ] The minutes from WHO’s PDVAC meetings show that multiple hubs were still being contemplated as late as November 2021 [ 37 ]. According to Patricia Neves, project manager for Bio-Manguinhos’ center for vaccines using mRNA, MPP officials queried “why are you here [in Cape Town visiting Afrigen] if you are developing your own technology?”(PN) At the time, MPP was focused on securing a voluntary license from Moderna or another more established mRNA manufacturer even though WHO had previously tried and failed to secure such a license.(EDL) MPP’s track record shows that it adheres to the norms of market-based competition and contract-based solutions even though voluntary licenses frequently exclude countries with strong manufacturing capacity, such as Brazil [ 38 , 39 ]. Perhaps this organizational philosophy explains why MPP appeared to be unsupportive of Bio-Manguinhos’ plan to establish end-to-end manufacturing capacity, at least in early 2022. Yet, Missailidis explains why mastering every step of the production process is critical to national health security:

We don’t do fill and finish. We need to have all the technology transferred up to… Well in the traditional vaccines, the master cell bank and everything. And we need to be able to produce [the active pharmaceutical ingredient] 100% properly. This is a condition for any tech transfer we’ve ever done […] because of guaranteed national production in Brazil. […] [H]istory shows that when the epidemics or pandemics or whatever else, you can’t guarantee that you have the vaccine when you want it. […] So, when we spoke, for example, to Moderna for COVID, didn’t even speak with us. Pfizer did, but they were not eager to do a tech transfer, they wanted to do fill and finish. Which we said ‘Look, you know we’re not doing that. This is not our motto. That’s not how we work.’(SM)

Two years on, the mRNA programme continues to evolve. The programme currently encompasses a diverse array of actors, including the South African consortium and fourteen other LMIC-based spokes ( Fig 1 ), which are now referred to as ‘partners’ because of the negative connotations of the term ‘spoke’.(CG) The programme’s architects have also come around to the idea of creating the end-to-end manufacturing capacity first espoused by Bio-Manguinhos and echoed by Afrigen not long after it became the hub. At a meeting in Bangkok in the fall of 2023, WHO and MPP officials outlined potential sub-consortia—engaging partners both inside and outside of the programme—focused on R&D around pathogens of shared, regional interest. In this way, Bio-Manguinhos or other manufacturers that assume the lead for a particular sub-consortium might become de facto hubs for a given target.(CN) Expanding the programme’s focus upstream is also seen as crucial to its overall sustainability given that demand for COVID-19 vaccines is now limited.(PT,CG,AK, MF, CN) Yet, as we show in the sections that follow, a number of choices made by its architects about what commitments participation in the programme entails, what kinds of support should be provided to Afrigen and others, and how the programme is governed, may limit the programme’s potential as a collaborative effort to improve equitable access to mRNA interventions in LMICs. Our analysis reveals that the programme’s relatively weak commitments to access and affordability, preservation of companies’ respective freedom to contract, consolidation of control by powerful actors in Geneva, and deference to the market as the ultimate arbiter of which entities will survive, both resembles the status quo and risks fragmentation within the programme, to the potential detriment of equitable access in LMICs.

Notes : (1) Two participating manufacturers, Biovac (South Africa) and Biovaccines Nigeria, are shown on the boundary between public and private ownership because each entity is a public-private partnership. All other entities depicted in the figure are state-controlled enterprises (i.e., publicly owned) or private companies. (2) For the purposes of this figure, the term ‘experienced’ refers to entities that have produced at least one vaccine that has been licensed for clinical use. Several manufacturers that fall into the ‘experienced’ half of the figure have produced more than one vaccine. The entities in the ‘inexperienced’ sphere have not yet fully developed a vaccine; however, some have generated sales through other products.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003173.g001

Critical inputs from publicly funded science, weak conditionalities & measured charity

The first defining feature of biopharmaceutical production concerns the limited quid pro quo that the public sector receives in exchange for supplying private actors with financing, biopharmaceutical R&D, and product leads. Despite significant government investments in, and publicly funded researchers’ extensive contributions to the development of vaccines and other products [ 40 – 45 ], weak conditionalities tend to be attached to government and philanthropic funding of biopharmaceutical R&D. Generally, public funding (whether in the form of research grants, collaborative research agreements, or advance procurement agreements) stipulates an obligation of data transparency (e.g., publishing studies). Also, the right of university scientists to continue to conduct research with the technology in question is usually included in IP agreements. But clauses that stipulate where manufacturing should occur, when and where products can be distributed, or how resulting goods are to be priced, are not standard [ 46 – 49 ]. Instead, conventional wisdom is to grant maximum discretion to recipients of public funding, including universities and government laboratories, as well as private actors about how to commercialize biopharmaceuticals. Under this logic, informed by the dominant approach that maximization of profits encourages innovation, the state’s role is not to shape—but simply subsidize—biopharmaceutical innovation [ 47 ].

Consistent with most early-stage biopharmaceutical R&D, the funding for the mRNA programme comes solely from governmental sources. Charged with the responsibility of fundraising, MPP secured financial commitments from France, the European Commission, Germany, Norway, Belgium, and Canada alongside the government of South Africa and the African Union [ 50 ]. To date, these donors have committed USD 117 million to the programme (with USD 89 million received so far (CN), the majority (73%) of which has been allocated to the consortium, including Afrigen, with the remainder (27%) supporting LMIC partners. According to MPP, which holds the bulk of the funds in Geneva, the USD 117 million is “seed money.” By 2026 the programme is expected to be “self-sustaining [ 50 ].” Still, MPP is continuing to seek additional funding, in particular, from the US government, which, in contrast to the WHO’s influenza technology transfer hub [ 51 ], has yet to offer any direct financial support for the mRNA programme.

Countries donating funds—or contemplating doing so—have shaped the programme in multiple ways. Germany, for example, earmarked a portion of its funding for a staff position at the hub. With only German or French nationals deemed eligible for the role by the funder, however, Afrigen was unable to fill the position.(PT) The government records obtained through an access to information request reveal that Canada, the second largest donor country, has stipulated that its funding be allocated to the hub in Cape Town and four select countries hosting manufacturers participating in the programme: Senegal, Nigeria, Kenya, and Bangladesh [ 52 ]. Further, according to one interview participant, while HICs are supportive of transferring technology to LMICs, they would prefer that such transfers do not extend to the more upstream inputs into mRNA vaccine production, including novel LNPs and antigens. Nevertheless, researchers at a number of publicly funded institutions located in South Africa as well as others abroad, including the University of Witwatersrand (Wits), the University of Cape Town and the North-West University, the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the US’ NIH/NIAID, have already made substantial contributions to various aspects of mRNA product development at Afrigen.(CF,PT,PA,CdK,XB)

At the start of the manufacturing process the aim is developing an ‘antigen’ that will provoke an immune response, conferring protection against a given pathogen. For Afrigen’s AfriVac 2121, the lab of Patrick Arbuthnot at Wits drew upon information already in the public domain to design a plasmid, a circular piece of DNA which can be propagated efficiently in bacteria and then prepared in larger amounts to use as a template, and shared it with Afrigen.(PA) NIAID’s Vaccine Research Center (VRC) similarly contributed to the plasmid construction and purification steps in line with current “good manufacturing practices” (cGMP) standards set by regulatory authorities.(XB,CF) After entering into a Research Collaboration Agreement with Afrigen in March 2022, the VRC shared its knowledge and hosted Afrigen scientists for onsite training [ 53 , 54 ]. Demonstrating the value of being part of a consortium, Afrigen will pull in more contributions from publicly funded researchers at Wits, the University of Cape Town, and other South African universities, as it increases its focus on the development of second-generation technologies, such as novel lipid nanoparticles (LNPs),(CdK) and new disease targets like TB, malaria, and HIV.

The critical question is whether the funding that has been secured for the programme and supporting the development of these second-generation mRNA technologies has been leveraged into a shared set of commitments geared towards improving equitable access. The relationships among the actors involved in the mRNA programme are defined by a set of legal agreements crafted by MPP. ( see S1 Table ) Under the technology transfer template agreement and all but one finalized technology transfer agreement involving MPP and LMIC partners, the latter are granted a “non-exclusive, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-transferable, irrevocable, fully paid-up, royalty-free licence” to the technology as well as any rights held by Afrigen and the Biovac “to make, or have made, use, offer for sale, sell, have sold, export or import” in their respective territories and other LMICs (as defined by the World Bank) [ 22 ]. In return, LMIC partners must grant to MPP upfront a “worldwide” non-exclusive, royalty-free license to “practice and have practiced the data and the Inventions for the purposes of fulfilling its mission to facilitate the development and equitable access of health technologies” that is “non-transferable, but sub-licensable.” As WHO’s Friede explains, the programme is akin to an IP sharing club comprised of the South African consortium as well as the thirteen other LMIC manufacturers that have signed an agreement to date:

[T]he key objective here is that for us, open means open for LMICs. It does not mean open for [HICs]. So, if Wits can generate some revenue providing a license for use and sale within [the] US, Canada, Europe, Australia, good for them, on condition that for all of the LMICs, there is a fully paid-up, royalty-free license available.(MF)

The programme’s pooled, multilateral approach to knowledge production is rare in the biopharmaceutical sector. MPP’s head legal counsel, Chan Park, notes that this deviation from standard practice stems from the fact that MPP was in a fundamentally different position compared to when it is attempting to secure a voluntary license from a multinational pharmaceutical company to an existing therapy:

When we’re negotiating with big pharma on a drug that they have already developed and are commercializing, our leverage is far lower. We can ask nicely for it and if they say no, we can ask again, and if they say no again, we just have to live with it. But here we’re building it from the ground up. We’re providing the funding, and so we can say, ‘This is a project for [LMICs] and that’s it.’(CP)

Still, there are a number of notable incongruities embedded in the programme’s underlying legal architecture, which run the risk of fragmenting the larger, collective enterprise of improving equitable access to mRNA products in LMICs. To start, some of the partners have yet to sign on. According to Bio-Manguinhos’ Missailidis, the Brazilian manufacturer cannot sign such an agreement because of its pre-existing, exclusive technology transfer agreement with AstraZeneca.(SM) His colleague leading Bio-Manguinhos’ mRNA vaccine project, Patricia Neves, also intimates that the idea that technology developed by Bio-Manguinhos, using funding from the Brazillian government (as opposed to funding from the mRNA programme) would flow to manufacturers from participating LMICs, which in some cases, are for-profit commercial entities, without anything in return is an “injustice.”(PN)

The issue of royalties also proved to be a sticking point within the South African consortium. According to a South African government official, a lot of back and forth with MPP was required:

[I]f somebody has spent 20 years developing a piece of IP, it’s really hard for them to say take it and go and do what you like with it. And a manufacturer can make a markup of 15%, but I’m going to get nothing from it. So that to us was a disconnect that we had quite a lot of discussion around. […] And we can’t just have somebody else outside the country making money offered, but we have to balance that with affordability and access. And that’s the balance we’re constantly struggling to achieve.(XX)

An unevenness between LMIC partners and the South African university laboratories funded by the SAMRC, where the former must share their IP royalty-free and the latter may expect a return, is thus embedded in the programme. (CP,XX) None of the executed technology transfer agreements between MPP and LMIC partners state this; on the contrary, the license granted from MPP to partners is framed as “royalty free.” However, the Grant Agreement with SAMRC grants MPP a “non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable, irrevocable, worldwide, license to practice and have practiced the data and Inventions for the purposes of fulfilling its mission to facilitate the development and affordable and equitable access of mRNA technologies in low- and middle-income countries (as defined by the World Bank), which license may include a royalty sacrifice.” ( see S1 Table ) Thus, inventions patented by SAMRC-funded researchers, including second-generation mRNA technologies such as the novel LNP, may be rewarded with royalties whereas new IP generated by partners using mRNA technology will not.

A second IP-related incongruity in the programme’s legal architecture concerns the territorial limitations imposed upon IP licenses among different actors involved in the mRNA programme. As the central intermediary, MPP is granted a “worldwide” license to IP that is generated by both members of the South African consortium as well as LMIC partners. In turn, partners (with the exception of Indonesia’s BioFarma) are entitled to receive IP via MPP but only for use, sale, export or import within LMICs. For its part, BioFarma managed to negotiate a “worldwide, non-sublicensable” license to the IP it receives from MPP; it can therefore use, sell, and export such IP globally, but it cannot sub-license it to other entities in LMICs or HICs. That flexibility of licensing IP they generated to companies based in HICs only extends to members of the South African consortium (excluding Biovac as one of the partners). ( see S1 Table )

Notwithstanding the leverage the programme’s funding conferred, MPP also stopped short of requiring that resulting mRNA products be priced affordably for populations in need outside of a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” (PHEIC). If an mRNA product developed by one or more LMIC partners targets a PHEIC, they cannot charge more than the cost of production plus a twenty-percent mark-up [ 22 ]. ( see S1 Table ) However, none of the pathogens being targeted by the programme’s partners—from TB to respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), malaria, and other infectious diseases—are currently designated as a PHEIC. Thus, consistent with industry norms, the mRNA programme does not contractually constrain partners’ pricing decisions. Rather, the assumption is that by targeting LMIC markets, the price of the final product will, of necessity, be affordable; otherwise LMIC governments will simply not pay for it. “Traditionally,” Charles Gore recalls, “MPP has not interfered in pricing. Our model is based on competition, and clearly we are potentially giving this to 15 companies around the world.”(CG, emphasis added)

In contrast, researchers in South Africa who receive funding through the SAMRC must, under the terms of the funding, ensure that any “resulting products”—regardless of whether they target a PHEIC or not—will “be made available and accessible at an affordable price to people most in need within [LMICs].” Revealing differential treatment among participants in the programme, SAMRC-funded researchers and partners with products targeting a PHEIC have agreed to some form of pricing constraint whereas Afrigen has no such obligation unless and until it is in receipt of funding from SAMRC.

Significant questions about the enforceability of affordability clauses exist. Although they have included such clauses for “many, many years,” one South African government official emphasizes, “it’s really an aspirational clause” because “we haven’t had to yet really test that.”(XX) Other funders in the field of infectious diseases, notably CEPI and the Gates Foundation, are experimenting with various pricing commitments, such as “costs of manufacturing plus” a set percentage and tiered pricing (where products are priced lower in LMICs than HICs through confidential discounts) [ 55 ]. (JC) In contrast, MPP appears to be comfortable relying on free-market competition among LMIC-based manufacturers instead of imposing affordability clauses when it comes to products generated by virtue of participating in the mRNA programme.

In effect, the programme’s approach reduces the pursuit of equitable access to the task of fostering more localized production. This is a logical step towards addressing local population health needs. But localized access is never guaranteed, particularly with initiatives that are expected to be “self-sustaining” businesses. Whether local manufacturers ultimately develop and sell their wares to local populations at an affordable price assumes, first, that those same manufacturers will maintain control over how their products are designed, where they will be launched and at what price; and, second, that local manufacturers’ own business models and resource constraints will not compromise their pursuit of localized access and affordability. As we explain next, the web of transactional relationships that Afrigen and other programme participants have entered into may complicate that mission.

Transactional R&D: Testing the limits of voluntary licensing

Under the dominant model of biopharmaceutical production, partnerships among the multiple actors engaged in the development of a biopharmaceutical product—from publicly funded labs to start-up companies, providers of research materials and equipment, contract research organizations (CROs), and large multinational manufacturers—tend to be secret and transactional in nature [ 56 – 59 ]. Whether the aim is to secure research materials such as reagents or lipids, a license to use IP, assistance with recruiting participants for a clinical trial, or purchase outright a medium-sized company with a promising therapeutic candidate, agreements are generally actioned under conditions of confidentiality between two partners, with one typically acquiring the asset of interest from the other. Thus, enclosed , bilateral partnerships — often short in duration—dominate biopharmaceutical R&D. More open and continuous knowledge-sharing arrangements through multilateral collaboration are, in contrast, relatively uncommon [ 33 ].

The original budget the South African consortium submitted to WHO was predicated on receiving technology transfer from an established mRNA manufacturer.(PT) Securing voluntary licenses to use IP is at the core of MPP’s work and philosophy [ 38 ]. The organization “has no intention […] of infringing any patents,” MPP wrote while seeking funding from the Canadian government, “not least because MPP’s key partners for licensing are pharmaceutical companies [ 52 ].” However, none of the HIC-based mRNA companies—Pfizer, BioNTech, Moderna, or CureVac—were interested in sharing their technology with the mRNA programme: “They didn’t even want to talk.”(PT) As a result, “the project turned into a green fields vaccine innovation,” that is, “product development from nothing,”(PT) just as Bio-Manguinhos had proposed in 2021.(PN)

Looking to scale up rapidly but “wisely,”(CF) Afrigen began enhancing its own in-house capabilities where possible while outsourcing other elements of the manufacturing process. In order to make the drug substance and then formulate it into a product with the addition of an LNP, Afrigen purchased off the shelf a microfluidic device from Precision Nanosystems, a Canadian firm, to assist with the LNP encapsulation process.(CF) Fenner, Afrigen’s scientific director, details how Afrigen overcame the key hurdle only to change plans in order to streamline costs for its LMIC-based programme partners down the road:

[W]e knew that it was difficult to do LNP formulations and we saw all the skepticism and everything from everywhere else. […] But for us we were like, ‘Well, what was all the hype about really? We have been able to do it.’ So we did use the Precision NanoSystems [PNI] machine, it’s not that difficult to use. […] And if you don’t have access to lipids to do the actual formulation, the company themselves have a lipids mix which is proprietary to the company that they make available to their customers. And so that you can then formulate the mRNA into an LNP. […] Having said that, we decided to not scale up on the [PNI] machine for the actual manufacturing. [T]he reason why we chose [another] machine is because that we thought that it is more simple to operate and that it has a lower running cost associated with it, which would be more appropriate for [LMICs].(CF)

While Fenner noted that Precision NanoSystems was acquired by Danaher Corporation after Afrigen began using its PNI machine, it was not clear whether Danaher’s record of acquiring products and increasing prices, including for a TB diagnostic test [ 60 , 61 ], factored into Afrigen’s decision to shift to another microfluidic device.

To demonstrate that AfriVac 2121 was ‘non-inferior’ to the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech’s vaccines, it is necessary to perform preclinical testing in one or more animal models. The architects of the mRNA programme decided that aspect would be done by Xavier de Lamballerie’s lab in Marseille, France, given that lab’s experience using a hamster model to conduct SARS-CoV-2 challenge studies [ 62 ]. Marie-Paule Kieny, chair of the MPP’s board, explains:

[W]e wanted to have this in a center where the model has been validated internationally. So if Xavier de Lamballerie publishes that these results are equivalent, everybody will believe it. If somebody in Afrigen is saying that it’s the same, ‘Uh-uh.’ So, he’s neutral, he’s independent, he has no skin in the game. So he’s testing the system. And now that we have this, so he has a lot of other studies to do, he will do neutralization of variants and so on and so forth, so this will be one package. And now he is also starting immunization of another batch of hamsters with the Afrigen product, the Moderna product, the Pfizer product, and this hamster will be challenged.(MPK)

When Lamballerie’s preclinical studies of AfriVac 2121 are complete, the hamster model will be transferred to South Africa.(MPK,CF) As a result, “the local university [in Cape Town] is actually being capacitated…there’s essentially a transfer of knowledge and protocols between the two so that in the future we would be able to do it in South Africa.”(CF)

At each turn of the manufacturing process knowledge gaps are thus identified and addressed, often with the help of outsiders. Terblanche reports that Afrigen has at least nine different “cooperative research and development agreements” (CRADAs) at the “active implementation stage.”(PT) [ 63 – 66 ] In some cases, the outsider’s contribution is coupled with a commitment to assist Afrigen or another consortium member in gaining internal capacity, such as the hamster challenge model or performing GLP compliant toxicology studies, which Afrigen has outsourced to a “one stop shop” in India.(CF) In other instances, it is not clear whether the bilateral agreements will precipitate sustained collaboration around a shared set of goals. Meanwhile, mRNA programme partners are striking new deals and funding arrangements of their own. Bangladesh’s Incepta, for example, has partnerships in the works or already in place with the University of Pennsylvania, Afrigen, Imperial College London, US NIH, and the Belgian company Quantoom.(MMA,MK)

It is notable that all of these bilateral CRADAs, funding agreements, and other contracts are the product of the programme’s design. WHO and MPP, as the programme’s architects, have chosen to place minimal constraints upon programme participants’ ability to enter into bilateral agreements with external actors. The only stipulation under MPP’s technology transfer template agreement is, if a partner of the mRNA programme obtains access to IP of a third party, the partner undertakes to “use reasonable efforts to negotiate a licence to MPP for such” third party IP. According to Terblanche, Afrigen has carried those access commitments through all of its CRADAs; where potential partners have balked at those terms, Afrigen has backed away from the deal.(PT) None of Afrigen’s bilateral deals, nor those of programme partners, are publicly available, however.

Participating in the programme is a business opportunity. Serbia’s Torlak Institute, for instance, has offered to sell reagents used during the production of influenza vaccines to other partners during the first programme-wide meeting held in Cape Town in April 2023.(LD) “I think this is the interesting part that we have,” Bio-Manguinhos Missailidis explains, “you create a network that eventually there will be bilateral agreements within the network of people interested in some of our projects.”

Outside actors engaged in the mRNA space have also increased their deal flow by virtue of their connections with the programme. According to Jose Castillo, head of Quantoom, which is known for its machines that automate an early part of the mRNA production process, already counts seven of the fifteen partners as its “customers” and is in active discussions with the other partners as well.(JC) Quantoom’s contracts with the programme’s partners moreover run deeper than simply selling its machines. Castillo recounts how he “knock[s] on the door talking about tech, but the contract I sign is a collaboration agreement”(JC). In return for assisting a partner to design an antigen against a pathogen of interest, Quantoom acquires a non-exclusive license to any project-related IP the partner in question generates.(JC) With agreements in place with many of the programme’s participants, Quantoom stands to add substantially to its IP assets, rendering it an attractive target for acquisition by a larger entity. Castillo’s previous company, Artelis, was ultimately acquired by Danaher in 2015 [ 67 ].

The programme’s architects are thus walking a fine line between trying to seed collaboration within and on the margins of the programme and trusting all involved to thread the commitments to IP access throughout that evolving web of relationships. Terblanche and Castillo appear steadfast in their commitment to the programme’s stated objectives, yet cognizant of their respective organizations’ vulnerability to market forces. Terblanche shares her thinking:

I have a very strong, purpose driven, public health orientation. But I’m not stupid, I know my company needs to be financially viable to deliver on that promise. But greed is not my sin. Okay? I think that’s the difference. But I can’t tell you […] what will be the next CEO’s orientation? If Avacare [Afrigen’s primary shareholder] dilute or sell[s] us […] I have no control. So the only control I now have is agreements of care, which is public access. And these agreements will survive shareholders’ ownership. That’s the only thing I can do.(PT)

The decision to rely, to a significant extent, on private actors, banded together through CRADAs and other contracts, to build and share mRNA manufacturing capacities in LMIC settings is a signature feature of the programme. It is also reflective of the demonstrated preferences of its main architects, especially MPP, which has ascended in prominence in the sphere of global health as a result of the programme’s development.

Financialization’s intermediaries: MPP as a rising ‘power broker’ in global health

A third defining feature of the biopharmaceutical sector today meriting comparison with the mRNA programme stems from the industry’s highly financialized character. While the financialization of an industrial sector can manifest in several ways, the concept has generally been used to refer to the “increasing role of financial motives, financial markets, financial actors and financial institutions in the operation” of both domestic and international economies [ 68 ]. In the biopharmaceutical sector, the shift toward financialization is evident in the move by most major firms to become publicly traded on one or more stock exchanges (as opposed to family-owned businesses reliant solely on product sales for revenues) since the mid-twentieth century, the increasing importance assigned to maximizing shareholder value by financial actors with a controlling interest in many biopharmaceutical firms, and the growing reliance upon the tools of the financial sector, including mergers and acquisitions, and share buybacks and dividends, as the primary means to generate revenues [ 57 , 69 , 70 ].

The consequences of biopharmaceutical financialization are also several-fold. With financial companies, such as banks, venture capital firms, and asset management groups today often owning a controlling interest in any given biopharmaceutical firm, the strategic direction of those firms tends to become “more short-term oriented seeking to maximise immediate shareholder returns instead of making investments that look to the long-term health of the company [ 69 ].” Financialized biopharmaceutical companies may also increase prices for products already on the market to offset the cost of share buybacks and dividends, allocate greater resources towards marketing and advertising instead of R&D, and outsource R&D and manufacturing activities to countries, including LMICs, where labor costs are lower to the detriment of companies’ in-house capabilities [ 69 , 70 ]. In fact, many biopharmaceutical firms actually outsource R&D and manufacturing activities to third-party CROs rather than perform the work in-house [ 71 ]. Outsourcing R&D has, in turn, created a space for a variety of intermediaries and consultants to develop business models of their own, connecting large firms with CROs and other service suppliers in exchange for a fee, claims to IP, and reputational capital that flows from bridging various steps in the R&D process.

There is no indication that any of the mRNA programme’s direct participants mirror the financialization that is evident among more established biopharmaceutical companies. Neither Afrigen, nor its primary shareholder Avacare, are publicly traded companies. The same is true of the other private companies partnering with the programme. None of the companies involved appear to be using the tools of finance such as share buybacks as a means to generate returns. While some inputs into the manufacturing process have been secured from outside entities, Afrigen, Biovac, and programme partners in other LMICs are invested in developing their R&D and manufacturing capacities in-house in an effort to increase local production in LMICs. The Belgium company Quantoom, which has locked in partnerships with most LMIC manufacturers in the programme, may be amassing an interest in each partner’s IP. But Quantoom’s machines, which automate the in vitro transcription step of mRNA production, seem to contribute meaningfully to the manufacturing process.

While MPP’s position within the programme is not a symptom of financialization, the role that the foundation plays is analogous to the intermediaries that link together biopharmaceutical R&D and production supply chains. Like the industry’s many intermediaries, MPP’s presence simultaneously adds value to, and imposes a drain upon, the mRNA programme.

Through the programme’s legal architecture, MPP has positioned itself as the central intermediary for technology transfer. Afrigen is the nominal hub for partners to receive training and it has provided a 3-day course about mRNA manufacturing to most participating manufacturers. However, it is MPP—at times, with the assistance of outside consultants (MMA, CN)—that has assumed the role of conducting site visits, assessing the needs and capabilities of each partner, and conveying the knowledge, data, and IP generated by the consortium. Awaiting for MPP to visit its facilities, representatives from one partner noted that receiving the transfer directly from Afrigen, as the producer of the drug substance, might be more efficient. But the partner cautions that its technology transfer agreement is with MPP, not Afrigen. As a result, “all the information comes from MPP.” That is, “Afrigen to MPP and MPP to the spoke, [i.e.] to the technology transfer recipient.”(XZ,XA)

Having MPP as a ‘middleperson’ is not the optimal way to provide technology transfer.(AK,EW,PN,PT) Typically, technology is transferred from one party, which has direct experience utilizing it, to another, through both sharing of hands-on know-how and detailed documentation such as ‘Standard Operating Procedures.’ Even in that two-party scenario mistakes occur, for example, when experimental protocols are not sufficiently delineated. Introducing an intermediary into the process, which lacks hands-on experience practicing the technology in question, increases the chances that the transfer will be unsuccessful. Nevertheless, over the course of 2022–2023, MPP created its own technology transfer unit, comprised of five individuals with doctoral and master degrees in chemical engineering and other fields as well as varying levels of experience in the pharmaceutical industry [ 72 ], to manage technology transfer within the mRNA programme. According to some interview participants, this has precipitated frustration with MPP’s approach to technology transfer:

The MPP is spending gobs of money on creating a group that is supposed to be doing tech transfer. I’ve worked for more than 30 years in the industry. You do not have a remote group that does tech transfer. If a group is going to do tech transfer, it needs to be in the facility that’s sending the technology out. They need to be the detailed subject matter experts. So they seem to be building this empire that’s going to do what, I don’t know. And they seem to be micromanaging and want to be in charge of everything.(AK)

In that participant’s view, “if [the programme] doesn’t succeed, it’s going to be because of that kind of dynamic, not because the science doesn’t work.”(AK) Altering that dynamic, moreover, requires tact:

MPP now takes the funding for that [technology transfer] part and it goes to MPP because they have the team. So I don’t want to be seen, now I want all the money for Afrigen. It’s a […] sensitive thing because people I think, they go sometimes, “because oh, you’re Afrigen, you just want to dominate and control.”(PT)

Afrigen will, according to Terblanche, assume responsibilities for the technology transfer in 2024. But whether the Cape Town company’s people will be resourced to travel, train, and transfer technology to partners remains “under negotiations.”(PT)

MPP clearly has the potential to add value to the programme in the IP domain. Its core expertise lies in evaluating patent landscapes for legal risk and negotiating licensing agreements with IP holders. MPP has compiled the patent landscape associated with mRNA technologies; the findings to date are worrisome. Of the nine LMICs linked to the programme through a partner for which patent data is available, patent applications have, according to MPP’s dataset, increased markedly since a PHEIC was declared in January 2020 [ 23 ]. (see S2 Table ) More than a third (56 of 159) of all patenting activity related to mRNA since 2006 in the 15 countries connected to the programme (concentrated mainly in South Africa, Brazil, India and Serbia) occurred between 2020 to 2022. Further, there are reportedly an increasing number of “use patents” (purporting to claim IP on the use of mRNA technology against a given disease, e.g., malaria) being filed in South Africa and other LMICs. WHO’s Friede says such patents could block Afrigen and partners’ R&D plans, “especially […] in countries like South Africa where there’s no substantive examination [of patent applications to ensure they meet standards of novelty, non-obviousness, and utility].”(MF)

Notably, MPP’s work on the IP dimension of the programme does not extend to providing the South African consortium or other LMIC-based manufacturing partners with legal opinions about their respective “freedom to operate,” (FTO) i . e ., to conduct research and product development without undue risk of patent infringement litigation. The memorandum of understanding between WHO and MPP states that MPP will “provide IP analysis and commission [FTO] assessments for the Partners, as necessary [ 22 ].” However, the technology transfer agreements entered into with each partner refer only to providing “IP analysis…as practicable and appropriate” rather than supporting FTO assessments. MPP has reportedly provided funding for some partners to pay for FTO analyses by local law firms.(FL) Afrigen, however, has had to seek out independent legal advice using its own funding.(AK,PT) At least one partner is under the impression that the patent data that MPP has prepared and presented at programme meetings amounts to FTO guidance.(XZ,XA) But presenting a high-level summary of all the patent documents that exist is not the same as an in-depth interpretation of the scope of each patent granted in a jurisdiction—the core inquiry involved in crafting an FTO opinion.

The IP strategy behind the programme appears instead to be that the programme will meet incumbents’ IP positions with IP of its own. Glaudina Loots of South Africa’s department of science and innovation emphasises that the university scientists funded by the programme are keeping “the patent lawyers quite happy.”(GL) At least two patent applications have been filed to date, one pertaining to antigen design and another on a novel LNP technology, with each listing inventors from the University of Witwatersrand, including Arbuthnot and chemist Charles de Koning. Arbuthnot contextualizes the importance of these new patent applications in light of the programme’s goals of not just manufacturing a COVID-19 vaccine but also producing second generation mRNA technologies:

The lipid nanoparticle part of an mRNA vaccination technology is very, very important, so we’ve been doing a lot of work on that, and it’s a particularly interesting project, actually, with some synthetic organic chemists here in Johannesburg at Wits as well, who are using a bio-renewable source for the manufacturer of the important ionizable lipids, they’re called. […] We’re very excited about this because the lipids that are made to put into the vaccines that are used by, say, Moderna and Pfizer, are based on petroleum chemistry, so they’re not bio-renewable products at all. If we are able to get products that can work as lipid nanoparticles, this is potentially something that could be quite big, and we’re very excited and enthusiastic and working quite hard at trying to do that. That’s an example of something that would enable us to have freedom to operate where we wouldn’t have, wouldn’t be dependent on the [IP] of anybody else.(PA)

While the experimental work to determine whether the bio-renewable lipid works is ongoing, “the medicines patent pool guys in Geneva,” de Koning emphasises, “are telling us, ‘You need to patent the stuff’” to ensure the hub has FTO.(CdK) Underscoring the potential strategic value of these patents in the event that the consortium or programme partners are confronted by a competitor down the road, WHO’s Friede offers that “if that IP stands up to be really powerful, and we run into problems with certain companies, that IP might be a bargaining chip.”(MF) In other words, a strategy of “defensive patenting” could help shield the programme from threats of patent infringement from outsiders while also sharing knowledge among participating manufacturers [ 73 , 74 ]. The success of that strategy will depend on whether the patents are ultimately granted.

In short, MPP’s philosophy around IP, FTO, and contractual, negotiation-based solutions is imprinted on the programme; and, through its control over the programme, MPP has grown significantly in size and stature in the world of access to medicines. In the five years leading up to the pandemic, MPP’s annual budget was in the range of CHF 5–6 million [ 75 ]. Since the pandemic began and the mRNA programme was launched, MPP’s annual income has increased roughly fourfold (to CHF 23 and CHF 19 million in 2021 and 2022, respectively), the number of staff has jumped from 25 to 44, and their budget for external consultants has doubled [ 75 ]. Yet, it is not clear that MPP’s presence and philosophy will work to the advantage of the programme’s different participants. For instance, other go-to sources of funding in the field of infectious diseases, including the US NIH, the Gates Foundation and CEPI, have steered away from funding the programme as a whole. Gates recently provided USD 40 million spread between Cape Town-based Biovac, L’Institut Dakar in Senegal, and Quantoom, which has agreements with several programme partners [ 76 ]. CEPI has likewise supplied funding to four manufacturers taking part in the mRNA programme,(CN) including Indonesia’s BioFarma [ 77 ]. None of these awards will flow through MPP, however. “I don’t understand” why MPP and Gates are not working together, Quantoom’s chief executive Castillo explains, and I have “that conversation with MPP and the same conversation with Gates, and not only with Gates, but with Mr. Gates.”(JC)

Institutions engaged in the field of global health have long competed for resources, goodwill, and influence [ 78 – 81 ]. To the extent that there is fallout between actors vying for influence in Geneva, its impact upon the mRNA programme will not be uniform. Having expanded its portfolio of work to the realm of technology transfer, developed funding relationships with several HIC governments, opened a local chapter in South Africa, and launched a new strategic plan [ 82 ], MPP’s place as a new “power broker” [ 81 ] within the sphere of global health appears assured. In contrast, the business at the heart of the programme, Afrigen, has thus far been unable to secure funding from Gates and other sources, and is, according to its head executive, increasingly “vulnerable” to financial strain.(PT)

The sustainability question: Market-based governance

The fourth and final feature of the status quo is that control over the direction of biopharmaceutical production is concentrated in the hands of powerful, private actors that are, at bottom, governed by the market . Established firms calculate the ‘net present value’ (NPV) of one disease target versus another, which systematically devalues diseases that are endemic in LMICs and thus offer lesser financial returns [ 83 – 85 ]. The entrance of the Gates Foundation and other philanthropic organizations has supplied new research funding for TB, HIV, malaria, and many other “neglected diseases.” However, it is far from clear that these dominant organizations are prepared to rethink IP-intensive R&D practices or enforce access commitments in the service of public health [ 32 , 81 , 86 , 87 ]. They, too, are private actors, wielding significant influence over governments and entire scientific fields outside—and unaccountable to—the broader public.

Afrigen has targeted eleven potential diseases for mRNA product development. Unlike the standard approach to R&D, Terblanche suggests that the prospect of financial gains has not shaped the hub’s priorities to date:

Somebody asked me, […] ‘Your pipeline of 11. How did you get to it?’ I said, ‘I look at the unmet need, I look at the region. I look at whether there are vaccines or not, and I look whether the mRNA is suitable for it. And I look at whether we have access to antigens.’ And they said, ‘And what about the market?’ I said, ‘I’ve not included the market in my decision-making. I’m driving a need. And I’m not driving a profit, I’m driving a need, I’m driving sustainability.’ (PT)

Multiple proposals focusing on Lassa fever, RSV, and other disease targets, have since been turned down by a variety of funders, leaving Terblanche to concede that her “hand will now be forced to prioritize” in light of market rewards.(PT)

The architects of the programme appear to have accepted Afrigen’s precarity from the start, anticipating that the Cape Town firm might not survive in the hyper-competitive mRNA marketplace. The absence of pricing commitments parallel to those imposed upon programme partners or a commitment to allocate up to ten percent of “real-time production” capacity in the event of a PHEIC within the four corners of Afrigen’s Grant Agreement with MPP [ 22 ] ( see also S2 Table ) could be interpreted as an incentive for Afrigen to commercialize its technology. Read in conjunction with the views of the programme’s architects, the omission of these terms from the Grant Agreement likely suggests that the architects did not contemplate that Afrigen would ever generate mRNA products of its own. Recalling that some of the companies that took part in the influenza hub later shut down production, WHO’s Friede estimates that if a handful of LMIC manufacturers manage to make mRNA vaccines, the newer programme will be an overall success.(MF) Charles Gore of MPP notes, “we are funding [Afrigen] to develop and then shift [the technology] out,” but “they don’t [yet] have a business model.”(CG) Like any private enterprise engaged in biopharmaceutical innovation, MPP’s Marie-Paule Kieny speculates that Afrigen will, in the end, probably yield to market forces:

[W]ill the hub always be a necessity? I would argue no. […] The hub is really there to establish a first platform and improvement, and to help with an early pipeline. After that we are fully aware that Afrigen is a private company, at one point they will try to find somebody to buy them out and to get the benefit. I don’t know, what can we do? (MPK)

The near inevitability of Afrigen’s exit in the eyes of those who designed the programme speaks to an underlying failure of imagination concerning how the mRNA programme is governed. During the pandemic, calls for more “inclusive and decentralized” governance structures have grown [ 88 ] in order to shield initiatives such as the mRNA programme from the risks and constraints posed by dominant market actors. At a minimum, a more inclusive and decentralized structure would entail two key changes to the programme. First, representatives from participating LMICs capable of steering the programme’s R&D towards local population would need to be directly involved in the programme’s overall governance and day-to-day decision-making. Second, multiple actors would need to serve as regional mRNA hubs—as originally planned—in order to mitigate the risk that one organization’s failure (or acquisition by an outside actor) might compromise the programme as a whole.

Instead, WHO and MPP internalized programme decision-making within two hand-picked committees, leaned on private actors like Afrigen to play crucial roles, preserved their discretion about what projects and partnerships to pursue, and limited input from LMIC governments and civil society during the programme’s first two-plus years of operation. Members of the South African consortium, including scientists funded by the mRNA programme, also registered concerns about the lack of transparency surrounding the allocation of resources inside the programme. (ALW,ER)

The privatized approach to governance preserves the programme architects’ control over the programme. The function of the “Scientific and Technical Review Committee” (or “STeRCO”) is mainly to advise WHO and validate “high-level funding envelopes,” including “the funding for the transfer of technology, the hamster model from Marseille to South Africa” and the purchase of large GMP equipment for preparation of mRNA for Afrigen.(MPK) For its part, the mRNA Scientific Advisory Committee (mSAC), which includes several notable experts with ties to industry, HIC governments, and academia, plays a more technical role, for example, evaluating the funding proposals submitted by South African researchers connected to the consortium. Reflecting their close working relationship, MPP’s Kieny chairs the STeRCO while WHO’s Friede chairs mSAC; the WHO is the secretariat for STeRCO while MPP supports mSAC’s meetings and deliberations; and, the decisions by both serve to validate the use of funds from one source or the other ( Fig 2 ). Missing altogether from this governance structure is any direct representation from LMIC governments whose needs and interests the programme is meant to serve.

Notes : (1) This figure provides a schematic representation of the organizations and actors involved in the mRNA programme, and the inter-relationships between them. We contrast how the mRNA programme has been described in principle (Panel A) where Afrigen is described as the “hub” and manufacturers in LMICs are partners (or spokes), versus how the mRNA programme appears to work in practice based upon our findings (Panel B). (2) There are several important differences between Panel A and Panel B, including the fact that all of the technology transfer agreements are between partnering manufacturers and MPP (represented by double-arrowed lines). The only direct collaboration between Afrigen and a partner is with Bio-Manguinhos; the two organizations are in negotiations regarding a partnership focused on RSV (represented by the dashed line). Panel B also shows that all of the funding that has been secured for the programme flows through MPP (and WHO to a lesser extent). Members of the South African consortium as well as programme partners must negotiate access to funding from MPP, which, together with WHO, has delegated decision-making to the mSAC and STeRCo committees. Finally, Panel B also highlights other actors involved in the programme, including researchers at the University of Witwatersrand, the University of Cape Town, and North-West University (represented as Wits, UCT, and North-West, respectively), and the Belgium-based company, Quantoom, which has formed bilateral relationships with Afrigen and the majority of LMIC-based manufacturing partners. (3) While the figure’s details derive from our research findings, they are not intended to provide a comprehensive picture of the mRNA programme. For example, recently the programme’s architects have put into place a “Funders Forum” for countries and organizations that have provided financial support for the mRNA programme, and four new R&D consortia involving programme partners and outside actors were announced in March 2024 [ 89 ]. In order to limit the complexity of the figure, these new structures are not represented here.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003173.g002

Collectively, these choices reflect the programme’s alignment with the dominant, market-drive approach to biopharmaceutical production. By design, the programme cannot stop Afrigen or other private companies embedded in the programme (e.g., Quantoom) from capitalizing upon the IP they amass through the programme or, if needed to satisfy their shareholders, sell their stake when the right offer materializes. Importantly, such a transaction would not mean that LMIC partners would be deprived of access to IP generated by Afrigen or other parts of the South African consortium. Similarly, a partner that patents an improvement of an mRNA technology that they receive from the programme cannot claim exclusive ownership over that new IP. Rather, the terms of the various agreements underpinning the programme pre-empt those possibilities. “[I]t’s a self-executing grant-back obligation,” MPP’s head lawyer Park stresses, so “if a spoke partner invents something, patents it, the license automatically comes back to us.”(CP) Notwithstanding this safeguard, however, the prospect of Afrigen exiting the space altogether or other parts of the consortium selling (on a non-exclusive basis) its IP assets to an entity based in an HIC, is in tension with the programme’s stated goals of building local mRNA manufacturing capacity in LMICs.

The foregoing findings raise questions about the design choices embedded into the mRNA programme, how best to empower LMIC-based manufacturers, and what additional steps need to be taken to ensure that this initiative enhances equitable access. We explore each in turn by way of conclusion.

A facsimile of the status quo in biopharmaceutical production?

Assessed against the dominant mode of biopharmaceutical production, we find that the mRNA programme nuances—but does not substantially depart from—at least three of the four key features of the status quo. Funding sources wield considerable influence over the mRNA programme, and university-based researchers and publicly funded institutions have made critical contributions to manufacturing processes and second-generation mRNA technologies. Yet, apart from requiring IP sharing inside the programme, the architects of the programme opted not to stipulate terms of affordability upon partners’ products (outside of the context of a PHEIC) on the strength of the assumption that market competition (either between the actors involved in the programme or with other mRNA manufacturers) will naturally yield that outcome. Further, the programme preserves every players’ freedom to contract with third parties. Thus, the programme’s commitment to IP sharing rests on each organization’s willingness to carry that condition through its various bilateral relationships, which have grown during the course of the programme. It is unclear if the programme provides oversight with respect to these bilateral transactions and, unlike the various legal agreements underpinning the programme, bilateral transactions between members of the South African consortium or manufacturing partners in other LMICs and third parties are also not publicly available. Finally, even though the entities involved are not embracing financialization in the manner of HIC-based biopharmaceutical companies, it appears that global market forces, rather than representatives of LMICs or local health needs, will ultimately decide what pathogens are prioritized for product development and whether Afrigen, the company at the heart of the programme, has a sustainable business model. To their credit, WHO and MPP are trying to seed collaboration within the programme, match-making participants around pathogens of shared interest and regional need [ 90 ]. But with trust among the diverse players still a work-in-progress, asymmetries in the programme’s legal architecture in terms of who stands to earn IP royalties and where products generated with the help of the programme can be sold, and funding shortfalls on the horizon for the hub in Cape Town,(PT) it is far from clear that these collaborations within the programme will materialize before difficult decisions about licensing IP to HIC contexts will need to be made in the name of sustainability.

Rather than forming a collective enterprise, the relationships among local producers engaged in the programme are fragile and participants appear just as vulnerable to market forces as they were before the programme was created in 2021. This outcome is a by-product of how the programme has been designed, in particular, a number of choices made by MPP while constructing the programme. MPP’s pursuit of a voluntary license from Moderna or another mRNA manufacturer arguably made sense initially given the state of the global health emergency when the programme began. However, MPP’s preference for a voluntary deal with an HIC-based manufacturer also appears to have undercut Bio-Manguinhos’ bid to become one of the mRNA hubs back in 2021. Bio-Manguinhos proposed building up end-to-end mRNA manufacturing capacity and ‘South-to-South’ technology transfer—a vision that the programme is now coming around to two-plus years later. The moment that a voluntary license from an established entity was not forthcoming, a deeper rethink of the programme’s architecture and norms was needed. Instead, most of the features of status quo biopharmaceutical production have been carried through the mRNA programme and MPP continues to court voluntary agreements from Moderna and other HIC-based biopharmaceutical manufacturers [ 91 ].

From remotely managed tech transfer to LMIC manufacturer empowerment

The mRNA programme’s design reflects both the resource constraints that (in the absence of more funding) the programme must operate under as well as MPP’s own institutional preferences around IP, competition, and solving access problems through voluntary (as opposed to mandatory) mechanisms. Without more funding from HIC governments, philanthropic organizations, or other sources, MPP was likely hard-pressed to demand that participating manufacturers agree to pricing constraints for mRNA products outside of a PHEIC. The money to make mRNA vaccines, in short, has to come from somewhere. Still, focusing exclusively on that economic reality obscures the high degree of control that the programme’s architects have maintained over all decision-making, resource allocation, and technology transfer activities.

Representatives from LMICs, including South Africa, are largely excluded from the programme’s governing structures. Likewise, civil society organizations from LMICs are not meaningfully represented on the programme’s STeRCo or mSAC committees. All of the funding for the programme sits in Geneva; only SteRCo and mSAC can decide if and when funding should be allocated. When Afrigen or another entity that is part of the programme is in need of additional funds, for instance, for the purposes of scaling up the next phase of technology transfer, or to pay for manufacturing equipment, it must engage in negotiations with MPP in order to access funding. Technology transfer, too, has to date been managed almost entirely by MPP’s new technology transfer unit notwithstanding the inefficiencies that this approach may carry.

It remains to be seen whether MPP, which has ascended in the sphere of global health during the pandemic as a result of its role as the central power broker for the entire mRNA programme, will over time cede some of its control and take the steps necessary to truly empower LMIC manufacturers. The move to create R&D consortia as part of the programme, constructed around pathogens of shared interest, holds promise. Providing FTO opinions to LMIC manufacturers when needed, advising LMIC governments about when and how to invoke compulsory licenses, stepping back from micromanaging technology transfer among programme participants—all of those actions stand to re-distribute control and decision-making authority to the researchers, organizations, and governments in LMICs. Yet, compulsory licensing runs counter to MPP’s way of doing business with established manufacturers and relinquishing control over the exchange of mRNA technology is in tension with the foundation’s newfound mantle as the go-to facilitator of technology transfer within the sphere global health.

Far from unique to the mRNA programme, conflicts around power and control are commonly in play within multilateral initiatives. In theory, “multistakeholder models of governance promise greater participation of different stakeholders;” yet, in practice, “these models can also undermine the authority of intergovernmental organizations, while expanding opportunities for powerful private actors to exert influence over governing structures, and concentrating power among parties with less democratic accountability to poorer countries and populations [ 12 ].” MPP’s rise has added to the “forum shifting”, turf wars, and competition that preoccupies a number of global health institutions claiming, or already commanding, political capital from Geneva [ 78 , 81 ]. Too often in the past initiatives with the stated intention of combatting neglected diseases in LMICs have remained under the control of organizations rooted in HICs [ 92 ]. Claiming ownership over the mRNA programme, its architects see themselves as “giving” mRNA technology to LMIC partners.(MF,CG,MPK) Many partners in turn express gratitude to be involved but, as often occurs when power imbalances exist, remain subjugated by the gift [ 81 ]. If the mRNA programme’s “decolonial aspirations” are to be realized [ 93 ], participating manufacturers in LMICs must be more empowered to collaborate South-to-South, build technological capacity, and generate mRNA interventions that are responsive to the health needs of, and affordable for, local populations.

Translating investments in the mRNA programme into LMIC-centered scientific infrastructure, participatory rights, and power

The mRNA programme has in one sense already succeeded. Producing an mRNA COVID-19 candidate with limited assistance from outside actors in a six-month timeframe demonstrates the South African hub’s technical capacity. From another perspective, the programme’s success should not be construed exclusively in terms of product development, but its potential as a lasting safeguard of local production capacity in LMICs. Afrigen and the programme’s partners are moving on to target other pathogens. Even if those efforts do not yield safe and effective mRNA vaccines against TB, RSV, malaria, and other priority diseases, the programme can still have a lasting impact by generating an accessible body of scientific knowledge, tools, and people with the know-how to apply them—provided that those outputs remain within the reach of, and are responsive to, LMIC health needs.

The idea of linking public funding for biopharmaceutical innovation to public scientific infrastructure, participatory rights, and power gained renewed attention during COVID-19 [ 47 , 88 , 94 – 96 ]. However, most governments demanded little to nothing in terms of IP sharing, equitable access, and reasonable pricing commitments from biopharmaceutical companies in exchange for the massive public investments that were made towards mRNA vaccines, among other interventions [ 45 , 49 , 96 ]. The mRNA programme improves on this state of affairs by requiring sharing of IP among the South African universities and LMIC partners who have signed onto the programme. Yet it does not stop SAMRC-funded university labs from also licensing their IP to actors in HICs or LMIC partners from entering into bilateral deals that capitalize upon the IP and know-how they have gained through the programme. Quantoom, the Belgium-based company that is formally outside the programme and thus not subject to its IP sharing commtiments, has struck partnerships with the majority of the programme’s manufacturers. Afrigen, for its part, can be sold to a third party if and when its primary shareholder decides that that course of action offers greater return than continued participation in the mRNA programme. All of these flexibilities that were built into the programme’s design introduce a risk that the knowledge, tools, and know-how generated by the mRNA programme may be exploited or extracted by outside corporations that do not share the goal of improving equitable access in LMICs.

To mitigate that risk and ensure that the programme’s outputs remain grounded in LMICs, a number of changes to the programme’s legal architecture and governance structures are worthy of consideration. First, the programme’s commitment to transparency should be extended throughout its operations. In particular, there must be greater transparency within the programme, such that Afrigen and other manufacturers can participate in, and have an understanding of, the decisions that are made by STeRCo and mSAC as well as the expectations of funders, including HIC governments. Similarly, the effort to make the programme’s legal architecture transparent should encompass any bilateral deals that members of the South African consortium or LMIC manufacturing partners secure. Making those transactions transparent will help guard against the risk that the programme’s collective IP and know-how will be captured by commercial outsiders. Second, representatives from LMICs taking part in the programme as well as civil society organizations from LMIC regions must have a stronger voice in the mRNA programme’s decision-making structures. Running forums with LMICs and civil society after decisions have already been made by STeRCo or mSAC is insufficient. It distances the work of the programme from the very people it is intended to serve. Third, the prospect of Afrigen—the hub at the centre of the programme—being acquired by an outside entity, or dissolved altogether due to financial challenges, must be more proactively addressed. The architects of the mRNA programme contend that outcome is essentially inevitable. However, steps can be taken to ensure that the publicly funded R&D infrastructure, product leads, and scientific know-how that Afrigen has amassed are not lost in the event of a private acquisition or insolvency. In return for additional funding, WHO and MPP should require Afrigen to make all of its IP and know-how available to the other members of the programme. Further, WHO and MPP should engage with the government of South Africa to see if corporate restructuring, acquisition by the state, or some other strategic investment offers a means to preserve public control over the knowledge and assets that Afrigen, in collaboration with others inside and outside the consortium, has developed during the course of the programme.

Public investment intended to improve equitable access to health interventions, such as mRNA vaccines, requires policy innovation in the form of participatory rights for LMIC communities and a protected stake in the scientific infrastructure and knowledge that that investment generates [ 96 , 97 ]. Revised with those fundamental goals in mind, the mRNA programme can position LMICs to lead where many HICs fell short in the context of COVID-19.

The provision of a technological solution, including vaccines, is no safeguard for equitable access. Attention to social context and structural challenges is needed to realize technology’s emancipatory potential. Our situational analysis of the WHO’s technology transfer mRNA programme, including semi-structured interviews with 35 individuals involved to varying degrees in the programme, suggests that the needs and perspectives of LMICs are not sufficiently centered in the programme. Further, the architects of the programme are working within the existing system of biopharmaceutical production and, at the same time, preserving their own control over the programme’s design and preferred measures meant to remedy shortfalls in equitable access to mRNA-based interventions. In particular, MPP continues to champion voluntary IP licensing as the optimal means to improve local production capacity in LMICs even though that mechanism did not attract collaboration from more established mRNA manufacturers in the context of COVID-19 and slowed adoption of a more transformative end-to-end approach to R&D and manufacturing. The technological outcomes of the mRNA programme remain uncertain. Absent significant reform and concerted effort to redistribute not just IP, but agency to LMIC actors, there is a significant risk that the programme, which is claimed by WHO and MPP as a collective effort to improve manufacturing capacity in LMICs for LMICs, will not solve the problem of equitable access to biopharmaceutical innovation.

Supporting information

S1 letter. response from global affairs canada to access to information request..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003173.s001

S1 Document. Disclosure Package from Global Affairs Canada.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003173.s002

S1 Table. Comparison of Legal Agreements Underlying the mRNA Programme.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003173.s003

S2 Table. mRNA Related Patent Filings in Countries with Participants in the mRNA Programme.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0003173.s004

Acknowledgments

The authors express our gratitude to Morris Odeh, PhD student at Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, for research assistance on mRNA patent data in South Africa and LMICs; to the members of the IEAC (Fatima Hassan, Françoise Baylis, Jason Nickerson, Reshma Ramachandran, Srinivas Murthy, and Viviana Munoz) for their contributions and insightful feedback to this work and conversations that helped shape the form and substance of this manuscript and research project at large; to the Health Justice Initiative (HJI) for their support and engagement throughout this process; and to Els Torreele, Amy Maxmen, Melissa Barber, and Amy Kapczynski for their feedback, suggestions, and assistance during the research and writing process. Any errors or inconsistencies are solely the responsibility of the authors. Finally, we are especially grateful to the many individuals who took part in interviews in connection with this research project. We hope our findings will play a constructive role as the work of the mRNA programme continues. All views in this paper are the authors and do not represent the views of the institutions they are affiliated with.

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• DOI: 10.21009/stairs.5.1.7
• Corpus ID: 271991452

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