The Invisible Strategy Behind Beauty & CPG Product Development is vetting, which requires three capabilities that remain active throughout product development.
Start here with the second capability — Strategic Decision-Making.
This reading guide walks through how to use emerging information to make decisions that support business growth, innovation, and long-term planning.
Strategic Decision-Making
As brand, consumer, and market dynamics evolve, emerging information can change the level of commitment to the product or require previous decisions to be reconsidered.
The skill is knowing what matters to the decision, what evidence is enough to support it, and when new information warrants reconsidering what has already been decided.
These articles examine strategic decision-making through recurring product-development scenarios so the same thinking can be applied throughout the entire process.
Ideation Has an Evaluation Problem
The Problem:
- You have a promising product idea, but the conversation immediately shifts to feasibility and everything else required to execute it before the team has established what kind of idea it actually is.
Read This to Understand:
- How to evaluate a product idea based on what it means for the brand and what it could add before execution requirements determine whether it is worth developing.
Key Takeaway:
- Understand what kind of idea you have before determining what pursuing it will require.
Why It Matters for Vetting:
- Evaluating the idea before its execution requirements helps separate the opportunity from the complexity surrounding it. Feasibility can then inform the decision without automatically becoming the reason an idea advances or gets rejected.
How to Level up Decision-Making in Beauty & CPG Product Development
The Problem:
- You’ve already made decisions about the product, but the market dynamics are making you question whether something needs to be reconsidered.
Read This to Understand:
- How to determine whether the market dynamics are significant enough to reconsider a product already in development or whether the existing direction should remain intact.
Key Takeaway:
- The value is knowing which changes matter to the product you are developing and which ones do not.
Why It Matters for Vetting:
- The market will continue evolving after decisions have been made. Knowing how to evaluate new information helps teams reconsider previous decisions, when necessary, without allowing every change in the market to disrupt product development.
Product-Market Fit is Not the Same as Brand Permission
The Problem:
- The product opportunity appears strong and validation is positive, but you’re unsure whether consumers will believe the brand has the right to solve the problem.
Read This to Understand:
- Why product validation does not automatically mean the brand has permission to enter the problem space, and how existing consumer associations change what that validation actually means.
Key Takeaway:
- Validating interest in the product is not the same as validating the consumer’s relationship with the brand offering it.
Why It Matters for Vetting:
- Understanding the brand’s existing place in the consumer’s mental map helps teams interpret product validation more accurately and identify what the product may need to reinforce before launch.
Not Every Product Deserves the Same Burden of Proof
The Problem:
- You need enough evidence to make a responsible decision, but the team keeps asking for more proof and you’re unclear about when you actually know enough to proceed.
Read This to Understand:
- How to determine the level of proof a decision actually requires based on its novelty, risk, irreversibility, and the knowledge already available.
Key Takeaway:
- Minimum Viable Proof is the level of evidence required to move forward responsibly, not the maximum amount of information the team can collect.
Why It Matters for Vetting:
- Matching the burden of proof to the actual risk of the decision helps teams avoid both under-evaluating a problem and delaying progress by seeking certainty the decision does not require. Existing category knowledge, consumer behavior, previous launches, and other available evidence may already answer part of the question.
Making the decision is only the beginning. Next is anticipating what that decision could require of the product and the business.
—by THE BUILD BRIEF