1. Sustainable competition comes down to cost and differentiation

Market competition is a long war, not a single battle. If two companies each have 100 yuan to spend, but one can make that money last a year while the other uses it up in six months, the second company is likely to run out of room first. Low operating cost creates endurance.

Differentiation is the other essential factor. A product does not always need to challenge a competitor across its entire territory. Sometimes the more effective approach is to identify one narrow point of weakness, focus resources on it, and build a more precise solution around that point.

One earlier case followed exactly this path. Starting with only a few thousand yuan, the team concentrated on a single point where the competitor was vulnerable. By building a highly focused and differentiated offering, it reached more than 100 million dollars in transaction volume within two years. Once that narrow position had been established, the team returned to compete on the larger market and quickly overtook its former rival. The competitor eventually had to sell, while the focused business continued to operate comfortably.

Two qualifications matter here:

• Low cost does not mean low quality.
• A product serving a niche demand should not be operated with unnecessarily high costs.

The goal is not to make everything cheap. It is to spend only where spending produces real competitive value.

2. Product thinking means satisfying a need at the lowest reasonable cost

Experience often commands a higher salary because it reduces costs. That reduction includes not only the cost of building a solution, but also the cost users bear when they adopt and use it.

Imagine a company wants to create a pregnancy-reminder product for expectant mothers. Its first instinct might be to build a standalone app. A more strategic first step could be a functional WeChat service account: use the platform to reach users, test the service, and accumulate an audience before considering an independent app. This lowers development and adoption costs while taking advantage of WeChat’s existing user base.

That, however, is product strategy rather than product thinking itself.

The deeper question is: what is the cheapest effective way to deliver the required service through the WeChat account?

A conventional approach might involve building a content management system with push notifications. The product would probably use a timeline-style information feed and send users pregnancy reminders according to their current stage. It is a workable plan, but it may not be the most economical one.

Pregnancy lasts roughly 40 weeks. Instead of developing a complete CMS, the team could create 40 mobile-friendly topic pages, each corresponding to one week, and send users a graphic-and-text link to the appropriate page. This approach would make the content easier to adjust and would also allow the pages to be viewed on a PC. Technically, the team would only need a customized function for pushing graphic-and-text links.

The requirement remains the same, but the implementation is much lighter. That is product thinking: recognizing that one need can be fulfilled in several ways and selecting the option with the lowest total cost, rather than automatically building the most elaborate system.

3. Product managers need an environment that forces them to grow

A product manager who has never experienced a period of uncontrolled, broad-based growth is missing an important part of the profession.

“Wild growth” here refers to the working environment, not to poor management. It is an environment in which responsibilities may appear scattered and the work may not fit neatly into a job description. At the same time, it exposes a person to many different kinds of knowledge and practical problems.

That breadth is valuable. Product managers need to understand users, technology, operations, content, business models, distribution, and many other areas. Without a sufficiently wide knowledge base, it is difficult to build the mental framework needed for product decisions. The ability to connect seemingly unrelated pieces of information is often developed through exactly this kind of mixed, sometimes chaotic work.

A narrowly defined role may feel efficient, but an overly narrow experience can limit a PM’s judgment. Early exposure to varied problems creates the raw material from which product sense is built.

4. Information asymmetry still creates an information dividend

Even with abundant online information and increasingly capable devices, people do not all know the same things at the same time. That gap can still generate commercial value.

Knowledge may be publicly available and shared for free, yet many people will remain unaware of it, fail to find it, or lack the ability to organize it. Training institutions and individuals can then package, teach, or even reproduce that knowledge for an audience that has not encountered the original material. The value does not necessarily come from owning exclusive information; it can come from having better access, organization, timing, or distribution.

That is the information dividend produced by asymmetry. The information itself may be open, but attention and understanding are not evenly distributed.

This is also why systematic knowledge can be more valuable than isolated facts. A collection of scattered tips is difficult to use. Once the same material is organized into a coherent structure, it becomes easier to learn, apply, and commercialize—even when the underlying information is freely available elsewhere.

5. There may be no entirely new needs—only new ways to meet them

Most human needs have existed for a long time. What changes is the way those needs are recognized and satisfied.

This idea is an extension of differentiated product thinking. The fact that another company already operates in a particular field does not mean the opportunity is gone. It may simply mean that the existing solution is not the only possible one. A different delivery method, user experience, business model, or point of focus can serve the same underlying need in a new way.

The important question is therefore not just, “Has someone already done this?” It is also, “What other form could this need take, and for which users would that form be more useful?” Competition does not always require inventing a new desire. Often, it requires finding a better route to an old one.

6. A user is never just one label

People have multiple identities and attributes. The label most visible to us is only one part of the person.

When someone has limited experience in an industry, it is easy to focus on the most obvious classification and treat it as the complete picture. A group called “PM Women’s Army,” for example, may appear to consist simply of female product managers. But professional identity is only one attribute. The same members may also be single women, partners, wives, mothers, daughters, students, or consumers with entirely different interests.

This became clear when a product case involving the iPhone 6 was shared in that women-PM group and then discussed in a larger public group. People questioned why the case had gained traction and argued that the audience being directed toward it did not match the product’s users. That reaction reflected a common mistake: seeing one label and assuming it explains the entire user relationship.

A person may be an X-type user in one context and a Y-type user in another. A professional group can therefore become a useful audience for products that have nothing to do with its members’ job titles. If a team later develops a product for women, that group could provide early testers. If a future product requires female PMs, it could also serve as a recruiting pool. Even a simple request to discuss product work with another PM could become easier because the relevant people are already connected.

The practical lesson is not to collect labels mechanically. It is to look for the meaningful attributes behind them and understand when those attributes matter. User conversion improves when products make valuable matches between a person’s different identities, interests, and needs.

A user should never be reduced to the first label attached to them. The more accurately a product understands the layers behind that label, the more opportunities it has to provide relevant services.