Best Product Wins?
Question: "Do the best products win in their respective product category?"
From an engineering standpoint, the best product is technologically superior. The underlying assumption is that a superior technology will yield performance gains and allow for building improved or new features. This is not necessarily correct or even what customers want.
From a market-driven product management perspective (e.g. Blackblot PMTK Methodology™) the best product is that which best solves the customer problem, regardless of the enabling technology that was employed.
In regard to winning, neither a technologically superior product nor a market-driven product will guarantee marketplace success in the form of the largest market share, most revenue, or any other metric.
This is because with very good product marketing and a mediocre product a company can have more marketplace success than another company with a superb product but mediocre product marketing.
At a minimum - the winning formula is a market-driven product that is based on robust technology and supported by clever product marketing.
Then come into play other important and impacting aspects such as brand, price, distribution, politics, social trends, and more.