Beyond the Build

Beyond the Build

Most Retail Mobile Apps Fail Before They Launch

What It Really Takes to Build a Successful Mobile App, and Why Retail Brands Underestimate the Operating Model

James Colgan's avatar
James Colgan
Feb 24, 2026
∙ Paid
What users see is simple. What it takes to make it work is an operating model.

Building Outlook Mobile at Microsoft nearly failed. More than once. In hindsight, it looks inevitable - Microsoft, email, hundreds of millions of users. It seems obvious, but it wasn’t. It was one of the hardest product challenges I’ve ever worked on, and it completely reshape…

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