Building the Next Big Thing

What’s next?

That’s the question that continually plagues product managers. No matter your org’s size,age, or current level of success, reinvention is necessary to grow and remain competitive. But once the backlog dwindles, where do savvy executives turn for inspiration?

At argodesign we’re quite familiar with this challenge, and have spent the last decade guiding business leaders through rigorous, research-led and data-driven processes to identify market opportunities, articulate a vision, and organize their business to deliver continual product innovation. Here are a few approaches our clients have found exceptionally effective.

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01 — Edgecrafting Innovation

Taking heroic traits to their extreme

One method borrows from Marketing guru Seth Godin’s 2002 book “The Purple Cow.” Dubbed “edgecrafting,” the process involves examining key product or business attributes individually, and then radically imagining the heroic conclusion if that trait were dramatically amplified.

These companies didn’t just make minor improvements to what was already being done in their industries. Instead, they found a unique edge to craft an experience or offer that was beyond what was common or expected.

Shifting from service provider to construction management platform

For United Rental’s digital transformation, we designed a vision for the next evolution of their rental management system. By examining key features and use cases, we extrapolated new ways for equipment managers to utilize the platform — expanding visibility into owned and 3rd-party rentals, providing deeper historic information on equipment over its entire lifecycle, and tracking not only the location and status of items, but also the activity and people assigned to them.

In this way, we were able to chart a course for Total Control, from rental management to worksite orchestration.

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02 — Climbing the
 Value Chain

Moving up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

Another productive technique is to identify where your product or service currently lives in your customer’s value chain, and envision ways in which it might evolve to “level up” and grow closer to solving users’ core needs.

Each of these brands successfully climbed the value chain by expanding their offerings, playing a more significant role in their customers' operations or lives, and thereby capturing more value and strengthening customer relationships.

Maturing from part supplier to
 manufacturing partner

Called the factory of the future, a major manufacturing provider grew its client base by providing cost-effective part production, but lacked visibility and inroads into customers’ broader manufacturing needs.



By designing tools to help engineering managers track the entire product development process across parts and assemblies, the company could fill a software gap, mine valuable manufacturing insights, and nurture deeper customer relationships. This strategy helps the company grow, and fills an unmet need in the market.

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03 — Owning & Expanding Your Category

Building brand families through adjacency

Many brands successfully expand their catalog or target market by looking for adjacencies — complementary products and categories or niche communities with similar needs. This strategy accelerates development of product families leveraging reputation and core strengths to own an environment and grow wallet and market share.

Each of these brands has successfully leveraged their initial offerings and brand strength to diversify and expand into new product or service categories, thus growing their market presence and customer base.

Venturing beyond the beverage aisle to support more of life’s moments

When a leading beverage brand decided to expand beyond tea, we conducted field research and market analysis to ideate and validate new product offerings that resonated with current customers while moving the brand out of the grocery aisle.



Taking inspiration from other beloved health & lifestyle brands, we identified a strategy to progressively introduce new items — from food supplements and cooking aids to home and body care — all designed to expand the brand’s approach to mind, body, and spiritual balance across more moments in their customers’ lives.

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04 — Tuning in to True Value

Discovering your brand’s authentic purpose

What your customers actually value doesn't always match what your brand is promoting. Take a step back and re-examine your brand’s value prop against perceptions — where they differ, and where things might have changed. With analysis companies can uncover radically new directions informed by use,experiences, and perceptions.

In each case, these companies were agile enough to recognize that customer value perception differed from their original assumptions and strategically pivoted their focus, resulting in successful business transformations.

Rediscovering what airline passengers truly desire

Working with a popular premium travel service we noticed a disconnect between what the brand promoted to its members, and how those members described its value to themselves and others. Due to this, the organization grappled with where to go next after airport check-in — further into the travel ribbon or outward into other environments and venues.


Furthermore, the brand had to evaluate which elements of the service were most meaningful to its customers — technology,service, or access — in order to reinvest in those core assets to build a recognizable and consistent portfolio.

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05 — Leaning into Cultural Trends

Leveraging analogs and change agents

It’s critical for brands to keep a pulse on technology, business, and behavioral trends in other industries, both for preparation and inspiration. Massive shifts in the way people organize, communicate, and work introduce new challenges and opportunities for existing companies.

These observant brands responded to emerging user behavior trends to innovatively adapt their products and services, ensuring they stay competitive and relevant in the changing digital landscape.

Embracing media’s inner child to discover the joy of social listening

For a popular music streaming service, attracting young listeners less attuned to the nostalgia of broadcast programming is an existential challenge.



For our research we interviewed participants to understand the entirety of their media consumption habits, especially within platforms popular with Gen-Z (such as TikTok, Twitch, and Discord),to identify and validate product and programming opportunities that resonate with youth needs and behaviors.

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06 — Leveraging Brand Assets

Capitalizing on unlocked capabilities

Another strategy is to consider how assets and internal tools might be leveraged into new revenue streams and product categories. Often times, solutions implemented in one area of the business can be utilized elsewhere, or repackaged and sold to other businesses and consumers with similar needs.

Each of these brands identified new avenues to apply existing assets and capabilities, maximizing their value propositions and exploring new markets or customer needs, enhancing business resilience and growth potential.

Moving from business apps to a workplace operating system

We worked with Salesforce to conceptualize their vision of a seamless website and product experience that consolidated and elevated its learning, community, and thought leadership properties alongside its productivity-driven business apps. Driven by ambitious1:1 personalization, this vision would pull together a 360-degree view of one’s business, customers, and career.

In order to realize this experience, we architected a plan to develop shared services that would power the platform, and developed a strategy for prompting, collecting, organizing, and utilizing content and user intent across interactions and web destinations.

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You don’t have to do it alone.

Let’s embark on this journey together.

Growing a business is challenging, and it can be extraordinarily difficult to design your next big milestone. Whether you need a workshop, analysis, or product roadmap, leverage my seasoned experience to help you identify opportunities, chart a course, and deliver your successful second, third, and fourth product launch.