I was hiking up the hill at Torrey Pines with a friend the other day. We were talking about all the hurdles a company faces bringing a medical product to market. It really is like climbing a mountain. After years of R&D, clinical trials and regulatory reviews, you finally reach the summit—FDA approval for market release. The rest of the journey should be easy, right? Unfortunately, FDA approval is just one in a series of mountains you have to climb to succeed in today's marketplace.

My friend and I agreed that many of the hurdles companies face are self-induced problems—because they simply can't get out of their own way. This is especially true when you begin making important marketing decisions. What needs of the target market should be addressed? How do you communicate the product benefits? What are the competition's true strengths and weaknesses?

Everyone on the team knows these questions need to be resolved before launch. So why is it so difficult to identify a clearly defined strategic brand position and marketing plan that everybody in the company will understand and support? The answer is that when a group of people work long and hard on developing a product, it's natural to become passionately involved with every aspect of it. Often everyone's opinion differs on which is the best path to success.

I'll be posting a few of the common ways that a product team can "get in its own way" when developing marketing strategies. Here's a good one:

Analysis Paralysis. Unwilling to commit to a strategic direction because of the overpowering need for more information and market research. Engineers, scientists, and marketing managers with MBAs tend to crave more data. Information is empowering, but there comes a time when choices must be made or the window of opportunity will close.