What makes a great idea?
By: Fabio Longano
Tags: Business, Development, Business Strategy, Product Development

Mindset first

We’ve all sat pondering from time to time: what makes a good idea? Is it the idea itself? Is it execution? Is it timing, or luck, or maybe a bit of all of the above? After all, I’m sure most of us have read that luck equals preparation multiplied by opportunity (to the power of network, or nepotism).

Jokes aside, fortune favours the brave — those of us who will put our own namesakes on the line to reach a destination we know we are destined for, those of us who will leverage our network as much as our smarts to ensure something succeeds. But there is really so much more to a product’s success. A multi-faceted diamond with occlusions invisible to the naked eye, success of your product is all incumbent on a few key factors, some of which I will explore below, but some of which, unfortunately, need the investment of time, patience and in some even more unfortunate cases, hefty school-fees by way of learning what does and what doesn’t work within your product or consumer model.

Before diving into the key factors that make or break a product, it is important to consider your mindset first. I’ve compiled a list of what I feel to be some of the most important aspects of building a product, that preclude building the actual product.

Going into your journey with the right mindset and expectations not only fortifies your ability to get through the rough patches, but also allows you to truly enjoy and appreciate the smooth waters. For if it was not for the journey, what point does the destination hold?

Always aim to delight your customers

At an event honoring the twentieth graduating class of the 10,000 Small Businesses program at LaGuardia Community College in New York, Warren Buffet, who needs no introduction, pitches one piece of sage advice to small and large business owners alike, “never stop thinking about how to delight your customer.” Beyond simply satisfying them — the supererogatory action of affecting purposeful delight is the magic that turns a customer into a lifetime partner.

“When you wake up in the morning, start thinking about it, at night think about it and then dream about it. No company has ever failed that had millions of delighted customers and you start with them by getting them one at a time. There is no substitute for hard work.”

Which segues elegantly into my following point:

There is no substitute for hard work

Let that sink in for a while. Many of us look for shortcuts — a quick-tab to the success sheet. Only consistent (or rather, persistent) work will get us where we want to be. Don’t take shortcuts. Resign yourself early on to hard work — it usually pays off.

Michael Bloomberg, founder of the all famous Bloomberg group of companies, says that, while it’s important that we all find joy in what we do, some of us have come to scapegoat luck as a viable stand in. It’s always directly or indirectly related to the effort we put in, by reinforcing the notion that the harder you work, the luckier you get.

Don’t be afraid to pivot

Kerry Healey, the president of Babson College, a Massachusetts based college for entrepreneurship, suggests that we embrace change along our journey. Don’t be discouraged if the business you end up with differs to the one you started out to pursue. Change is an inevitable part of our product journey, and by extension, life itself — adaptability favours those who can masterfully tick tack their way through an effervescent landscape. Adapt or die, evolve or dissolve — casting our mind and eye on one singular destination point always inevitably sets us up for failure. Treat your product development journey as an active enactment of the evolutionary chain — Darwinism at its finest. Make sure you’re always taking the opportunity to refine and redefine your product concept.

In your journey you will be guaranteed to be faced with difficulties, challenges or failures, in the industry we call them blockers or showstoppers. The idea is to learn from these very quickly and pivot, landing on the idea or solution that eventually works.

Think of your concept as a laser pointer that has a single origin source and a target destination. In a perfect world, that beam would shine straight ahead, onto the target. Now what if we put a block of wood in between the laser and the target? It will surely obstruct the light — and for the laser to still reach the destination source, we’d need to set up some carefully constructed mirrors to bounce the beam from point to point to eventually hit the target. Each mirror in this analogy can be seen as a strategic opportunity, because what mirrors also allow us to do is gain a different perspective — giving us a multitude of options to reach the eventual endpoint, ones we might not have considered beforehand with our tunnel-vision locked and loaded.