Proving the Experts Wrong

A number of years ago I was in a position where I was providing "seed" investments in new high risk/high reward technologies when an inventor came to me with what I thought was an interesting idea. He was asking for some money to build a prototype.

While I thought his idea might have significant customer appeal if it could be made to work, I was unclear about the probability of technical success, so I asked him what the "experts" said about his idea. He grumbled something about "the experts never 'getting it'" and continued to downplay their counsel. After I insisted that I would not give him any money until he told me what the experts said, he grumbled and left my office.

A few days later he returned and indicated that the experts said his idea would never work. Additional queries on my part produced scientific rationale for why two of the main premises for his idea were "not doable". I proceeded to ask him what he would do if I agreed to fund him for $10,000 (significantly less than his initial request). He said, "I'll prove the experts wrong!"

Well, I'm sure you know where this is going. Some weeks later he invited me to his lab where he showed me breadboard "proof of concept demonstrations" that he indeed had overcome these two hurdles. He went on to make further progress and successful demonstrations of the technology.

I bring this up to point out the fact that sometimes we can and must establish short term milestones and monitor incremental progress on the way to a grander goal. There was no way I was going to agree to his initial funding request since all he had was an idea that experts said was impossible. At the same time, I was willing to fund a more narrow exploration into the technology because of its promise, but only if I had confidence that the researcher was going to use the funds wisely to take on the most critical hurdles first. Sometimes it's far easier to work on the less challenging aspects of a project first only to "hit the wall" on the more difficult aspects after a large amount of money has been spent. Far better to fail early and cheaply than the opposite.

Innovation is and always will be a risky business. We can, however, make the risks more reasonable by the approach we take.

Getting the Prototype “Right”

Once, during a conversation with a young entrepreneur I had just agreed to coach, I asked him to tell me a bit about the status of his embryonic "software as service" business. Proudly, he replied, “We’re putting the final touches on our 7th prototype!” Wanting to be impressed with what he and his team had done, I asked, “What did you learn from the customer on the earlier ones?” He replied, “Well, we haven’t been to the customer yet. First we need to get the prototype ‘right’.” Instantaneously, I firmly queried, “How will you know?”

In my work with companies – new and established – I continue to see a reluctance to engage the customer, the final arbiter of product success or failure. The reasons why people avoid engagement are numerous and include: “No time”, “No money”, “We already know what the customer wants”, and my favorite, “The customer doesn’t know what they want”. All of these can be true in certain circumstances, but history would suggest that we generally know less about the customer and her needs than we need to, and our product development efforts suffer as a result.

My mantra is to engage customers early and often, and I’ve found that, with a defined objective for the engagement, this approach always results produces benefits. What we ask will differ depending on where we are in the development of the product or the business – but we can almost always learn from talking with the customer in the appropriate way.

Instead of accepting the reasons why we’re unable or don’t need to engage the customer, let’s come up with ways that we can and should!

See the October 22 entry for stories of low cost customer engagements that paid huge dividends. More to come.