Why Google, MS, FB, IBM, etc. have Failed Products?

Question:
Why do so many products of the best technology-champion-companies; like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.; fail even though these companies have the best talents in the world?

Answer:
Companies often start with One Core Idea (Strength)
and
It is NEVER easy to Replicate their dominance in that segment in other areas.

For example:

1. IBM's strength was always in complex, large Mainframes and they never could replicate the success of Microsoft in the PC market.
2. Microsoft was a goliath in PC, but could never succeed in the web.
3. Google had a killer web 1.0, but never understood web 2.0 [their forays in blogging, micro-blogging, and social networking were all failures].
4. Facebook aced web 2.0, but never understood mobile [forcing them to buy Instagram and Whatsapp].

Great companies have fumbled multiple times trying to come to terms with a newer product paradigm - Sometimes they bought their way out of this mess by throwing massive sums of money in acquisitions, but other times they were not so lucky.

Source:

This post has been fully derived from an answer written by Balaji Viswanathan on Quora.com

Product Management - generic Product Lifecycle

Planning to build a B2B or B2C Product?
This is how its lifecycle would look like this:

1. Understand:
1. Users problems/needs
2. Business wants/expectations
3. Market/business/design/technology trends
2. Prirotize the user/business/market needs
3. Ideate product(s)/feature(s) to solve/satiate for the highest-priority user/business/market needs
4. Validate your product's idea by conducting/checking:
1. UX/user/usability research (user interviews)
2. Market research
3. Business validation
4. Tech feasibility
5. Detail/document product's strategy (objectives & benefits)
6. Finalize product's scope (MVP & non-MVP features)
7. Design the following:
1. User journey/flow-charts covering all (un)happy user scenarios (emotions & contexts)
2. IA (information architecture) of the content
3. IxD (interaction design) of the individual features
4. Wires (& a dummy prototype if needed for UX/user/usability research)
8. Document/detail a PRD (product requirement document) collating the product's strategy, scope, journey, wires, KPIs (key performance indicators) of each individual product feature & of the product-as-a-whole, funnels, pre-launch activities, post-launch activities, UX guidelines (if anything specific), etc.
9. Present the PRD to stakeholders (business/leadership/investors) and get a written sign-off
10. Following steps are now executed in parallel:
1. Groom (also covering timelines & NFRs) the PRD with engineering team - Product now goes into development. Track the agile-coding progress via daily standups & regular scrum sessions
2. Get VD (visual design) designed & get their HTMLs done
3. Get test cases written by QA/C (quality assurance/check) team and approve the same
4. Write UAT (user acceptance testing) test cases
11. [optional] Demo the QC'd product to stakeholders
12. Conduct UAT. Prioritize the bugs found in the UAT and get them fixed. Re-test the same once they are fixed
13. Finish pre-launch activities (like - Marketing, updating the customer learning manuals, readying the support/care teams) & Launch the product
14. Monitor the KPIs & funnels, conduct usability tests, track user feedbacks (online / offline) and improve the product as per.