Seeds of Failure
I’ve been a part of a lot of successful products and unfortunately a part of a lot of unsuccessful products (sigh). Looking back at them, I can now see that to have any hope of success, the following three issues should be focused on simultaneously during and from the beginning of product development. Don’t leave them to chance and don’t ignore them.
Issue 1: Market Risk
Market risk is the possibility that the target market will not want what you’re designing. This risk is bigger than most of us think. It’s easy for us to believe that because we like it, everyone will like it. One of the most powerful lessons I learned about this was from my kinematics professor Dr. Larry Howell, 25 years ago, who said something very similar to this: as engineers, you represent a very small portion of the market. If you want to create things that people like, you’re going to have to think about it from their perspective.
To minimize market risk, seek validation frequently. Validation is how we turn assumptions into facts. Do this by listening to thoughtfully selected individuals within the target market. Don’t engage only with friends, family, and fools. Make sure you engage with people who will tell you the truth about what they think. Approach validation with an open mind, one that is willing to see something unexpected; try hard to not simply see what you want to see. Work with and trust people on your product development team who are formally trained in interacting with market representatives.
As you seek validation, it is worth trying to establish (at least to some degree), how much validation you would need to receive in order to keep developing a product. Let go of wanting 100% validation. No product is loved and wanted by everybody.
Issue 2: Technical Risk
Technical risk is the possibility that the product will not work the way it needs to. To minimize technical risk, understand what the product needs to do functionally and how well it needs to do it; do this early in the development process. Pay attention to how these functional requirements become more refined over time. Adopt the notion of “verification”, which is that each element of a product’s intended functionality is tested and verified to be adequate. This can be done in a variety of ways including building and testing physical prototypes, constructing and exercising mathematical models, and setting up and running computer simulations of performance. To reduce real-life technical risk, be aware of what simplifying assumptions have been made when carrying out verification activities, and what the impact would be if those assumptions were incorrect. It’s also good practice to have back-up solutions (Always Have a Back-Up Solution).
As you seek to reduce technical risk, transcend the desire to satisfy your own curiosity regarding product functionality, and instead carry out tests and produce results that are shareable/understandable to others, thus satisfying the curiosity of other stakeholders.
Issue 3: Distribution Risk
Distribution risk is the possibility that you won’t be able to get the product to the people who want it. Even if you have a product that the market would really love, and that works super well, if you can’t get it into their hands, your product will fail. There are a ton of examples of this in the Kickstarter archive. Getting a well-designed product to the market is difficult. For physical products, it means having to make decisions about who will manufacture the product, who will perform quality control and what the quality standards will be, how to import and export goods, who will warehouse the goods, and who will do the order fulfillment and customer service. It will likely also include setting up a sales force, developing a marketing strategy, and understanding/formalizing the intellectual property surrounding your product. To minimize distribution risk, engage with people trained in supply chain management, help them by giving them the information they need and trust that their training will pay off as they do their job.
From a product development perspective, you can help minimize distribution risk by thinking about and choosing manufacturing processes while you are designing the product – in fact, most product developers do this very early in the product development process, as well as simultaneously think about and choose the materials that will be used in the product. Keep in mind that some materials are prohibited in particular regions of the world, or may only be shipped in a particular way. You can also think about critical components in your design and if they need to come from particular vendors. Ultimately, as you make design decisions that add items to the bill of materials, be thoughtful about how each item simplifies or complicates the acquisition of raw materials/components and how they affect the final distribution of the product to the market. Avoid the temptation to believe that if you design a great product all of the distribution logistics will work themselves out. At best this attitude will delay the introduction of your product to the market. At worst, the product will fail completely.
Seeds of Failure:
If we’re not careful about how we address these risks, they will very likely lead to failure. Here’s a helpful metaphor that I think about when trying to minimize risk during product development. Product development is like a journey where we move from Point A, a simple idea, to Point B, a product ready for manufacturing and distribution. By necessity, as we travel from Point A to Point B, we make many assumptions; assumptions about what the market wants, how well a product will work, how people will find and buy the product, and more. Every unvalidated, unverified assumption is a seed for failure that we drop along the way during the journey. The metaphor of the seed is particularly useful here since when we make those assumptions, they can seem simple and insignificant, yet over time – if not validated or verified – they can grow into crippling problems that end up being the root cause of product failure.
