Companies strive hard to create new software products that address an unfilled need in the market. When a product hits the mark, it enjoys success, and if it goes beyond innovative to transformational, it becomes an unqualified success. Just about every company and Product Manager hopes for such a product, one that brings in customer accolades, sales and profits.

What makes a product transformational is that it doesn’t just help people do their old job better. Rather, it lets people do their job in a whole new way. A transformational product comes with ideas for great new ways of doing the job, ideas which are built right in, so that the software reflects new approaches and best practices.

The new approaches and practices are woven right into the structure of the product, and reflected in specific capabilities. When customers buy your product, they are buying not only the software but also the built-in guidance, your company’s thought leadership.

But building thought leadership into your product presents an added challenge for customers who are faced with learning both a new tool and understanding new ways of doing their work. It can add a degree of difficulty to the implementation of the software that can threaten the whole project’s success.

Read on below for bright ideas and lessons learned about what is involved when you have built thought leadership into your product.