Why Time To Market for a new Product is so Important

It’s important usually because external factors seem to imply that timing is really important, but it’s taking ‘too long’ to create the product. Too long, of course, being highly subjective.

For example, you don’t want a product to be:

too early market-wise: before there is significant demand, e.g. webvan as a dotcom
too late market-wise: startup entering a very mature market segment with a commodity product
too late relative to an important event: i.e. not launch a physical product before Christmas or more accurately black friday
too late relative to competitive response: if you know your competitors are working on something (or even the same thing) you don’t want to be behind them
too late relative to a technology shock: think releasing a BlackBerry-like phone right after the initial iPhones made a splash

The point here is that you can create exactly the same product but have a big difference in how much revenue it earns simply due to bad timing. Same product, same cost, same team--product flops.