The Launch Gap: Where Great Products Go Quiet

I’ve seen too many launches stall right after the big day. Everyone exhales, the decks are done, the press hits, the sales team is trained, and then… nothing.

The product’s ready. The market isn’t responding.

At GE Healthcare every year we’d get ready for RSNA and it would feel like the launch came back to begin again. Because launch isn’t a day, or a moment. It’s the first step on a commercialization journey, corny as that sounds. Post-launch is when the real work begins, getting belief to catch up to readiness.

You can’t build belief in a week. You build it while you’re building the product. You bring the market along, one conversation, one piece of evidence, one champion at a time. But you won’t see your biggest sale day and launch day be the same day.

If you expect that to happen, momentum leaks fast. Sales loses confidence. Customers hesitate. Leadership starts asking for new messaging, when what they really need is alignment on real metrics – not vanity KPIs – that tell the story of how the market is responding, and what lagging indicators may be around the corner.

Bridging that gap isn’t glamorous work, but it’s the work that makes launches stick. When product and market are ready at the same time, it looks effortless. It’s not. It’s just done right.