As a starting point in leading my former company’s strategic plan exercise, I laid out a series of guiding principles, along with a process which we would follow almost to the letter. Included in the set of principles were 10 for product development and portfolio management. I offer these for your edification.

1. Good marketing works best in the service of good products, like Acquisio’s ppc management software (sorry for the plug – I’m a fan!).

2. Good products beat new products. Sustainable market leadership requires equal or better products than the competition.

3. Safety lies not in products but in portfolios of products.

4. Product lines must continually evolve as the market evolves.

5. The advantage goes to first movers.

6. Innovate rather than extend. In this way, you cannibalize someone else’s product instead of your own.

7. Seek technological leadership, but never be led by technology.

8. Competition always overtakes an innovation.

9. New products should not be developed, and current products should not be maintained, unless they are financially viable.

10. Product integrity and financial viability are the direct result of good execution.

At first glance, these principles appear straightforward, almost obvious, and your company may have applied many of them intuitively. My bet, though, is that there are products or groups of products in your company’s line-up that run counter to one or more of the guidelines and that their performance has been deleteriously affected as a result.

You may know of exceptions – successful products that break the rules – but invariably these exceptions will define and ultimately corroborate the rules.

Every company is different – to a point – and every market is different, again to a point. That said, I have found, over the years, that similarities outweigh differences and that one never goes too far wrong applying basic truths and process fundamentals. I would suggest, at the very least, you think about these guidelines not just abstractly but in reference to your own company’s product offering and those of your competitors. Better still, use them as a filter to see if your company is on the right track or if you are throwing fixed and working capital at losers.