It is very stressful when you're working on something very disruptive. What do you understand when you hear the words revolution, innovation, disruption, risk-taking, status-quo or corporate? It takes courage to stay in denial (of the status-quo) while working with the status-quo, towards bringing in your innovation. This journey may not be easy as you do not have past precedents or any kind of direct data points. So how do you work?
The scariest thing for an innovator can be Utopia - trying to ship the most ideal product to the consumers. An important question has to be asked here- is it even possible? If you fail to develop such a project- is it because you're terrible or is it because that's not viable? How would you ever know if the Utopia was viable? Are you being too harsh on yourself? When we compare ourselves with Apple, Google and others, are we jealous of their successful products? But do we know about what they started working on and what they ended up with?
So how can we ensure that we are not too harsh on ourselves and yet work hard enough to be able to innovate and disrupt the market? The world's first product in a certain category is expected to be a little primitive. The products will probably evolve as the market becomes more mature, with more suppliers/distributors/costumers/media showing interest in the category. Until then, you're probably better off packing your best bit of innovation and shipping it. Within all its imperfections, it should be able to get the core problem solved- something which people care about, something which is considered too good to be true, maybe! That's disruption for you.
When a disruptor looks at a market or an ecosystem, he/she can observe that market benchmarks are too low. So if an ideal niche is found, if the pressing issues are tackled, a start can be made. The products can slowly be evolved as and when more resources get into the organization. But the disruptor may have to pump more resources into solving the core problem, than on going thin spread in solving each and every problem. Now that's a dilemma, isn't it a bad product then, if it has 2-3 good features and with rest of it being terrible?
That's inevitable as startups are highly likely to be resource handicapped. So the question is- can your 2-3 features help you in winning a costumer? Can that core problem guard your problem even if the other features aren't that great? If the answer is a yes, then it probably makes more sense to deliver costumer satisfaction on this point, while managing costumer expectation.
You cannot wait forever, you have to ship. You have to make a start, once you start generating cash, you start building confidence and you'd continue to evolve the product line, you'll start getting better raw materials, value-adding collaborators on the go, once you validate the product idea through a revenue story. This is probably why I think disruptors shouldn't procastinate and that's probably why I agree with Guy Kawasaki when he says "Don't worry, be crappy, ship it"!
The scariest thing for an innovator can be Utopia - trying to ship the most ideal product to the consumers. An important question has to be asked here- is it even possible? If you fail to develop such a project- is it because you're terrible or is it because that's not viable? How would you ever know if the Utopia was viable? Are you being too harsh on yourself? When we compare ourselves with Apple, Google and others, are we jealous of their successful products? But do we know about what they started working on and what they ended up with?
So how can we ensure that we are not too harsh on ourselves and yet work hard enough to be able to innovate and disrupt the market? The world's first product in a certain category is expected to be a little primitive. The products will probably evolve as the market becomes more mature, with more suppliers/distributors/costumers/media showing interest in the category. Until then, you're probably better off packing your best bit of innovation and shipping it. Within all its imperfections, it should be able to get the core problem solved- something which people care about, something which is considered too good to be true, maybe! That's disruption for you.
When a disruptor looks at a market or an ecosystem, he/she can observe that market benchmarks are too low. So if an ideal niche is found, if the pressing issues are tackled, a start can be made. The products can slowly be evolved as and when more resources get into the organization. But the disruptor may have to pump more resources into solving the core problem, than on going thin spread in solving each and every problem. Now that's a dilemma, isn't it a bad product then, if it has 2-3 good features and with rest of it being terrible?
That's inevitable as startups are highly likely to be resource handicapped. So the question is- can your 2-3 features help you in winning a costumer? Can that core problem guard your problem even if the other features aren't that great? If the answer is a yes, then it probably makes more sense to deliver costumer satisfaction on this point, while managing costumer expectation.
You cannot wait forever, you have to ship. You have to make a start, once you start generating cash, you start building confidence and you'd continue to evolve the product line, you'll start getting better raw materials, value-adding collaborators on the go, once you validate the product idea through a revenue story. This is probably why I think disruptors shouldn't procastinate and that's probably why I agree with Guy Kawasaki when he says "Don't worry, be crappy, ship it"!
No comments:
Post a Comment