Reasons products fail are well understood
At least they are well understood by academics, agencies, consultants and most consumer products companies (and many others). So don’t think there is anything mysterious going on, and worse, don’t waste a lot of time re-inventing the wheel.
Product failure as a subject is intensely studied, and has been, in a modern sense, for at least fifty years. It’s anybody guess as to how many articles and books have been written on the subject, but the collective wisdom is enormous. We know; we’ve read most of them (well, the best ones anyway).
So, it would be very understandable at this point for you to ask the question “How can that be with such high failure rates?” The short answer is that companies don’t use the information available to them; and certainly not in a consistent and disciplined way. They either lack the information itself, or they don’t have a good way to put it to use, or they feel they just don’t have time to cover all the bases. We find that some general marketing principles are pretty well understood in the development community, although the history, nuances and relationships behind those principles are not. Many more principles are not understood at all.
But when it comes to turning knowledge into action, things can fall apart even more quickly, especially on the frontlines where development happens. The mechanical details of development itself are closely tracked; typically highlighting responsibility, due dates and the status of particular issues, but there is no quantifiable understanding of customer needs or the big picture—the things that have the greatest leverage in overall success. Everybody has their heads down working as fast as they can. They don’t see opportunities for innovation or significant problems coming. Failure by omission is a poor excuse when hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are at stake.