Helen Keller once said, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” Her statement is still relevant today, whether in philosophy or marketing. When creating product vision examples, having a clear vision can be the key to success.
Think of a product vision as a map and compass—tools that show people the way forward and various directions. A product vision focuses on a product’s specific goals, while a company vision outlines the organization’s overall purpose.
In this article, we’ll talk about how to create strong product visions, their examples, why they matter, how to craft them, and what makes them successful.
What is a product vision?
A product vision shows the end goal that a business wishes to achieve and the goal it is working to reach. It is an answer to the “why” behind any product.
Even though a particular brand’s product vision, mission and strategy are interlinked, they have separate purposes. Vision is the goal or destination, mission is the day-to-day journey, and strategy is the path through which the goal can be achieved.
For example, if your goal is to make travel stress-free, your mission should be to help people find directions, and your strategy should be to develop features like live traffic updates. Together, they guide the product to stay focused, solve real problems, and grow into something meaningful for customers.
Why is a product vision important?
A product vision provides a clear goal and direction for a business, keeping everyone focused. It helps create meaningful solutions to the customer’s needs while inspiring the team. Here’s how it helps:
- Make sure that everyone works towards the same goal.
- Acts as a blueprint of the product, keeping everyone on track.
- Serves as a source of motivation and inspiration.
- Helps brands focus on solving customers’ needs.
A clear product vision is a great help to any business and comprises certain elements.
Key elements of a strong product vision
Strong product visions motivate company employees and ensure their product stays focused on its goals. Here are some of the key elements they share:
- Clarity: A product vision should be simple and easy to understand, leaving no room for confusion.
- Inspirational tone: The vision should have the capacity to excite and motivate the team to work towards a common goal.
- Customer focus: The vision should solve problems and add value.
- Future orientation: A strong vision accounts for growth potential and future shifts in the market.
- Actionable alignment: The vision should be able to guide actions and decisions.
Let’s work on how to bring out the best product vision possible next.
How to craft your own product vision
Crafting your best product vision examples might sound tricky, but it’s a simple process when you break it down. Here’s how you can do it step-by-step:
1. Identify your purpose (“why?”): Understand why your product exists. What problem is it solving? A clear purpose should drive your product vision.
2. Understand customer needs: Listen to what your customers want and try to solve their challenges. When your vision statement addresses their needs, it becomes much more worthy.
3. Think long-term (5-10 years): A long-term product vision is crucial in a company’s journey. Imagine where your product will be in 5-10 years and craft your vision accordingly
4. Make it clear and inspiring: Keep your vision simple and motivating for your team and customers.
5. Align with business values: Ensure your vision matches your company’s core beliefs. It creates a strong message of keeping everyone working towards the same goal.
Creating a compelling vision is crucial to excite your customers and develop a superior product.
Best practices for defining a product vision
Here are some simple yet effective practices that will help you craft your product vision examples clearly and in an impactful manner:
- Keep it simple: A clear, short vision is easier to remember and understand.
- Focus on the “why”: Think about the problem you’re solving and how you’re improving your customer’s lives.
- Align with needs: Match your vision to your customers’ needs and market trends.
- Inspire your team: Make it exciting and motivating for your team.
- Stay flexible: Keep updating your vision per your customers’ needs and technological changes.
Now that we have understood what a product vision is, it’s key elements and ways to craft the best product vision examples, let’s move on to real-life examples.
12 Inspiring Product Vision Examples
Examining the product visions of 12 successful companies provides remarkable insights and tips about how we can go about it. These companies include:
1. Zoom
Vision statement: Make communications frictionless and secure
Zoom’s product vision statement example is built around features like smoother communication. From streamlining meetings and replacing the need to take notes or minutes – Zoom’s vision guides its employees to simplify how people interact and excel at their roles.
Highlight: The main aim is to cut distractions so that people can express their ideas more effectively and clearly.
2. LinkedIn
Vision statement: Create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.
LinkedIn focuses on business and employment, and its product vision is “to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce.” The line is future-forward and appeals to employees’ emotions by enabling users to establish and develop their professional lives – through networking opportunities, skill development options, opportunity-related features, or knowledge sharing.
Highlight: Since Covid-19, LinkedIn has facilitated several opportunities spanning the world. This shows they are on the right track to achieve the goal they have set with their vision.
3. BBC
Mission statement: To act in the public interest, serving all audiences by providing impartial, high-quality, and distinctive output and services that inform, educate and entertain.
BBC’s vision aims to innovate within the organization to serve its viewers and customers. Its mission highlights the importance of unique content and helps its employees create content that focuses on people. They aim to provide information to their viewers in an easily accessible way without the impact of silos that hamper work.
Highlight: BBC’s vision talks about positively impacting people’s lives by bringing a human touch to an area where facts rule the roost.
Note: It is important to note that BBC does not necessarily offer a product but a service. The vision/mission statement thus is more at the company level.
4. Tesla
Vision statement: Accelerating the World’s Transition to Sustainable Energy.
Tesla aims to alter how the world moves – and pushes for a world powered by solar energy, running on batteries, and transported by electric vehicles. Its vision is all about providing efficiency without having to change customer behaviors.
Highlight: Tesla talks about harnessing renewable energy to renew our relationship with the environment, and its actions fully support its vision.
Note: It is interesting to note here that Tesla’s vision does not talk about any specific product. But that is definitely the driving force behind all the products the company has launched so far.
5. Google
Vision statement: organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Google’s corporate mission and vision statements have four variables – information, organization, accessibility, and usefulness of data. Teams can easily derive their goals from this detailed yet simple vision: The World’s information is handled by the crawling aspect of the search engine. Organization is about creating the best algorithms that bring out the most relevant information, and personalization through analysis of extensive databases ensures usefulness.
Highlight: By effectively following its mission statement, google delivers value to its major stakeholder group – end
6. Amazon
Vision Statement: To be Earth’s most customer-centric company; to build a place where people can find and discover anything they want to buy online.
Amazon’s version falls under examples of product vision that are grand yet achievable. They want to be Earth’s most customer-centric company – Their vision helps their employees to focus on all aspects of the customer journey, from discovery to delivery (and beyond). Teams can interpret advantages in different ways and enable services that customers need – like the lowest possible prices, informing them of newer selections, ironing out the checkout process, and others.
Highlight: Amazon’s principles guide employees to focus on customer needs over everything else and give them leeway to handle issues to a certain level of autonomy for better results.
Note: This is again more of a company vision rather than a product one. But this vision does play a major part in what Amazon adds to its product portfolio & services.
7. Apple
Vision statement: We believe that we are on the face of the Earth to make great products, and that’s not changing. We aim to make the best products on Earth and leave the world better than we found.
Apple’s vision statement starts as a declaration: “We believe that we are on the face of the earth to make great products, and that’s not changing.” The Organization has always strived to make simplicity part of the product description. They look for ways to make technology products elegant, sleek, and easy to use. They derive their core value from their mission statement. They strive to be the frontrunner by constantly creating better solutions for existing customer problems: their solutions to privacy, diversity, and accessibility almost always have the end customer benefit in mind.
Highlight: Apple’s vision statement can be seen in its work – the efforts of multiple teams gel in seamlessly to create products that set the standard for the foreseeable future.
Note: While the individual products from Apple can have tactical vision statements at their own level, it is eventually the company vision that dictates the direction.
8. Microsoft
Vision statement: To empower every person and every Organization on the planet to achieve more.
Microsoft aims to help people and businesses worldwide realize their full potential. The efforts of Microsoft employees make it easy for everyday users to get the technology that used to be available only to big corporations. Microsoft’s products have always reflected the company’s vision statement through affordable, trustworthy, accessible, and easy-to-understand technology.
Highlight: Some principles Microsoft considers when making internal decisions are diversity, inclusion, innovation, and social responsibility.
9. Netflix
Vision statement: We want to entertain the world. Whatever your taste, and no matter where you live, we give you access to best-in-class TV series, documentaries, feature films, and mobile games. Our members control what they want to watch, when they want it, in a straightforward subscription.
With a vision statement like ‘Becoming the best global entertainment distribution service,’ Netflix has reinvented how people experience movies. From maintaining and renting out physical copies of movies, the company grew into the online sphere with its streaming subscription services, domestically and globally. By simplifying distribution, Netflix continuously improves the customer experience while expanding its streaming content.
Highlight: Constantly enhancing user interfaces and extending streaming services to devices that were not TV or PC – has helped the company stay true to its vision.
10. Sony
Vision statement: Using our unlimited passion for technology, content, and services to deliver groundbreaking new excitement and entertainment, as only Sony can.
Sony’s vision statement focuses on a passion for technology that aims to make a difference for customers by providing them with the best products and services. It aims to be a company that inspires and fulfills curiosity using Kando, a concept that represents the emotional connectivity of everyone involved in the Organization.
Highlight: Using a unique aspect in the vision statement emphasizes the roots of the Organization while bonding employees and processes toward growth.
11. Uber
Vision statement: We ignite opportunity by setting the world in motion.
Uber’s vision belongs in the halls of agile product vision examples, as it is about igniting opportunities by setting the world in motion. The app has made grabbing a cab in the middle of the night a straightforward, affordable affair. By aiming to create transportation that is as reliable as running water, everywhere for everyone, Uber also creates a viable income stream for drivers. Every decision points toward a better customer experience and goes a long way toward creating brand loyalty.
Highlight: The customer-centric nature of Uber’s vision statement covers drivers, too, and the features introduced help both parties understand and improve their rating.
12. Meta
Vision statement: People use meta platforms to stay connected with friends and family, discover what’s happening worldwide, and share and express what’s important to them.
Meta’s vision is to help its customers apply technology to stay connected in an increasingly digitized world. It aims to simplify communication and use unique technology to make societies better. The Organization keeps its culture diverse and alive by embracing experts from varied backgrounds.
Highlight: Meta believes in letting humans express themselves, and it appears in the vision statement where the focus is on individuals sharing and expressing what is important to them.
The above cases have shown that having a company or a product vision that resonates with employees and customers is essential for success.
Conclusion
Clearly defined values and principles guide organizations in developing compelling product visions. These vision statements can help articulate high-level goals regarding the product’s future. By aligning various groups and departments, product vision statements set a true north to refer to, which can greatly help brand development.
FAQs
Q1: What is the difference between product vision and mission?
A product vision focuses on defining the goal. It describes the purpose of the product and the value that it will deliver. A mission, on the other hand, works towards achieving that purpose.
Q2: How do you write examples of effective product vision statements?
To write an effective product vision example, it is crucial first to identify the purpose of your product, prioritize customers’ needs, think about it in the long run and keep it clear and inspiring.
Q3: Why is a product vision necessary?
A product vision is a framework that helps guide every decision in a product journey. It helps in the development of the product and makes sure that everyone is working towards a common goal.
Q4: How often should you update your product vision?
Keep updating your product vision from time to time, depending on the market trends, technological advancements and customer needs. Reviewing regularly can be a great step in this regard.
Q5: Can you share a strong example of a product vision statement?
A strong product vision example can be -“To inspire a healthier world, one workout at a time.” It’s clear, inspiring, and shows the product’s purpose of helping people live healthier lives through fitness
