Entrepreneurial Management is about solving unknown problems (pain) with unknown solutions (innovation). The key to solving uncertainty is by identifying pain, and the key to finding the right solution is by experimentation.
Run your experiment. Start with what you know. Then, what is unknown (question or hypothesis)? Design your experiment, conduct, learn, and around and around you go until you have a successful product.
Your idea needs to be desirable, feasible, and viable. If any of those are missing, your product is limited out of the gate.
PAIN. The essential ingredient for innovation. Look around for makesLift solutions tliat people Lave created in absence of a product. The deeper the pain, the greater the opportunity.
Gaining broad adoption takes a balance of price, benefits, ease of use, and ease of purchase. If there are strengths in all these areas, the percentage of adoption will be much greater.
“When you start looking at a problem and it seems really simple with all these simple solutions, you don’t really understand the complexity of the problem Then you get into the problem, and you see it’s really complicated. And you come up with all these convoluted solutions That’s . . . where most people stop But the really great person will keep going and find the key The underlying principle of the problem. And come up with a beautiful elegant solution that works.”—Steve Jobs (quoted by Steven Levy, The Perfect Thing).
You may have the best idea for something that isn’t all that profitable or that big of a pain for people. Find the areas of unresolved pain that are also as profitable as possible.
Maximize your revenue by mapping it out. Identify which activities and customers it is coming from. Also look at reducing any friction points for receiving the revenue.
Pricing is one of the most critical aspects of creating new products. Priced too low and you leave money on the table. Priced too high, you lose customers. The trick is finding ways to price it just right. One of the best ways to shed light on the right price is by surveying customers.
Stanford’s d.school came up with this brilliant process for innovation. This is a rapid way you can discover new innovations and validate them.
When Walt Disney was building his theme parks he would get down on one knee to see the park from a child’s perspective. Empathy is the critical first step to understanding your customers world and building products or experiences that meet their needs.
Based on what you learned through empathy what is the problem you will focus on solving? Craft an actionable problem statement.
Now take what you learned with the problem in mind and start coming up with ideas. The more ideas, the better.
Filter your ideas down and build a prototype. This can be out of duct tape and paper. This prototype is only to validate your idea and to test it with people. It doesn’t need to be fancy.
Find some people who fit your target, and test your prototype. What worked? What didn’t? What did you learn? Take those learnings and go back to Ideate -> Prototype -> Test again.