Amazon Web Services, or simply AWS, helped pioneer the cloud back in 2006. AWS is now an $11.5B business, making up 67 percent of Amazon's operating revenue last quarter. This success can be accredited to their approach of doing product development work "backward."

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This backward process translates to a thinking framework where Amazon starts their development process with the press release, which is usually the last step. A perfect sample of this is their S3, or Simple Storage Service, one of the best-known AWS products that were launched back in 2006.

To date, the product vision and purpose, which is to provide a simple web service interface to store and retrieve any amount of data on the web, remains unchanged. During its development stage, Amazon was working backward from the image of a regular individual that can have the same access and scalability as big businesses do.

The process that leads to the finished product usually, if not always, require numerous workarounds and adjustments to timelines. But by starting with a press release, the company is confident that it is working on an end goal that is consumer-focused.

It is very common for entrepreneurs to start their company with a consumer-focused mind set, but it is those that include the customers into their permanent development processes who create lasting products and brands. By putting the consumer at the start and center of the product initiative, regardless of the project size, it becomes hardwired into the central part of the company culture.

A consumer-centric ethos will keep a company focused on building the best product for the brand. It is not just simply about fitting the product into the market, but everything, from positioning to marketing and sales comes into play.