What do you do when you hit the end of your roadmap? If you know what your competitors are building, what’s next in your industry, and what your user need… and your platform already got that covered, how do you figure it out what’s next?

The first step is to realize that you are alone. If you were not alone, someone else would be designing/building what you need to incorporate in your product. The second step is to look at other industries: you don’t need to wait just before the singularity to research what’s available in terms of technologies.

If you try to address this “end of the roadmap” problem with questions like “how can we be more innovate?”, or “what would it be game-changing?”, you won’t find any answer, or at least find answers that seem crazy. A more practical question is: “What can be better?

If your platform has a rules-based system to optimize ad campaigns, how can you make it better? If you have agencies using your ad platform, or media analysts running campaigns, how can they do a better job?

Become familiar with what’s available today in the market in terms of technology, so you keep a list of potential tools/solutions. Then ask yourself what can be better. List problems, match with solutions, prioritize, ship.

Leo Celis