{"id":779293,"date":"2021-11-02T09:30:29","date_gmt":"2021-11-02T16:30:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/?post_type=msr-blog-post&p=779293"},"modified":"2021-11-02T09:48:40","modified_gmt":"2021-11-02T16:48:40","slug":"four-fallacies-that-can-make-your-idea-fail","status":"publish","type":"msr-blog-post","link":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/articles\/four-fallacies-that-can-make-your-idea-fail\/","title":{"rendered":"Four fallacies that can make your idea fail"},"content":{"rendered":"

by John Westworth (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\"blindfolded<\/p>\n

Image credit: iStock\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

The Law of Market Failure: \u201cMost new products will fail in the market, even if competently executed\u201d Alberto Savoia<\/em><\/p>\n

Let me be blunt – your feature, service or product is likely to fail. This is a well-documented phenomenon:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Clayton Christensen wrote that 30,000 new consumer products each year \u2013 and 95% fail.
\n\u2022 The research firm Nielsen are more optimistic putting product failure rate at 85%.
\n\u2022 A study conducted by George Castellion & Stephen K. Markham put the failure rate for new products at 39% – But this didn\u2019t include new features and updates to existing products.
\n\u2022 Anywhere between 50% (Standish, 2014) and 80% (Thomas, 2019) of features hardly get used with 24% never being used. (1)
\n\u2022 According to Failory, 90% of new startups fail.<\/p>\n

If we\u2019re being generous there\u2019s probably, at best, a 50\/50 chance of success for your idea. Would you be willing to make a bet on it if it was your own time and money?<\/p>\n

We\u2019re told to celebrate failure, because that\u2019s how we learn \u2013 and while that\u2019s correct, many of these failures could have been avoided. Failure is as much a failure of process as it is the idea itself.<\/p>\n

So how about if you could fail faster and earlier, and be continuously learning? How about if we could fail before our idea reached production? Remember, that each idea that reaches production has a cost above and beyond research, design and development.<\/p>\n

Well, we can, but first we need to understand where and why you go wrong when it comes to your ideas. You may be surprised to learn that the issue isn\u2019t with your solution \u2013 it\u2019s that you haven\u2019t understood the problem well enough. Let\u2019s look at a few examples.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re solving the wrong problem:<\/strong>
\nAccording to Nielsen, the #1 reason for of innovation failure is \u201cneglecting to address a broad consumer need.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a CBInsights survey, the #1 reason for startup failure was \u201cno market need.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the saying goes, it\u2019s easier to fix the wrong solution than fix the wrong problem, and there\u2019s no greater demonstration of this than seeing the amount of effort that goes into driving usage of a \u201csolution\u201d that nobody wants.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t expect customers to help you here. They may send you in the right direction, but they\u2019re not always aware of what\u2019s possible. Be wary of solutions given to you by customers.<\/p>\n

For example, I remember a salesperson asking for a report that showed what the customer owned, so the team went away and developed it. When we dug a bit deeper into why they wanted the report, it was so they could work out what the customer didn\u2019t own.<\/p>\n

Although there\u2019s no record of Henry Ford saying \u201cIf I\u2019d asked people what they want they would have asked for faster horses,\u201d it\u2019s still worth bearing in mind.<\/p>\n

The problem you\u2019re solving just isn\u2019t that big a deal:<\/strong>
\nWhile in our mind the problem may be worth solving, many of our users may just not be that into it. I\u2019m sure if you took a walk through many people\u2019s houses, you\u2019d see many \u201cproblems\u201d that haven\u2019t been fixed. The door that doesn\u2019t shut quite right, the hole in the wall where a picture once hung, the carpet that the cat has scratched. Why? Because the problem just isn\u2019t that big a deal.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s an aisle at one of the stores here in Washington labelled \u201cAs seen on tv\u201d – It includes such wonders as the avocado slicer, the strawberry stem remover and the chork (a combination of chopsticks and a fork). While they are solving a problem it\u2019s not one that people care about and so the stock remains unloved and unsold on their shelves.<\/p>\n

Check with your customer or user as to what\u2019s stopped them from solving this problem previously. That\u2019ll give you some insight into whether they really care about the problem.<\/p>\n

The cost of change is more than the benefit:<\/strong>
\nThe cost of changing is more than the benefit of the solution – For every feature we implement there\u2019s a cost to the user. Yes, the feature may be \u201cfree\u201d but there\u2019s a cost of learning something new and changing an existing habit. While not monetary, it does use the thing that users value most \u2013 time. There are many features that could save users time \u2013 but for some it\u2019s just quicker and easier to keep the status quo.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure there\u2019s wonderful Macros and Flows I could create that would automate many of my tasks \u2013 but in many cases the time spent learning and changing is more than the time saved.<\/p>\n

The market size for your solution isn\u2019t big enough:<\/strong>
\nYour power users may be clamoring for your idea but that may be just a small subset of your users. Think about what the impact is to the rest of your users. If power or niche users are only 10% of the users, do you want to add a feature that pleases them, but makes the tool harder to use for the other 90% by adding complexity?<\/p>\n

As Steve Jobs said \u201cI\u2019m actually as proud of the things we haven\u2019t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying \u2018no\u2019 to 1,000 things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes saying no may be hard, especially if it\u2019s your biggest customer asking \u2013 but in the long run you\u2019ll be better off.<\/p>\n

These are a few reasons for why and where ideas can go wrong. In our next installment, we\u2019ll cover a few more, and how to address them.<\/p>\n

What do you think? Where have you seen these fallacies in play? What others would you add? Tweet us your thoughts at @MicrosoftRI or\u00a0follow us on Facebook (opens in new tab)<\/span><\/a>\u00a0and join the conversation.<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

John Westworth is a Design Researcher in the Office Design and Research team. He is passionate about providing leadership to help companies implement change and manage transformation to use new technologies that impact how they work. Check out John\u2019s other blog articles, \u201cA responsible approach to innovation,”<\/a> “Conflict: The missing ingredient and biggest test of a growth mindset,” <\/a>and “The true cost of your idea<\/a>.” <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

(1) For some features low usage is a good thing \u2013 for example if you\u2019re working on a disaster recovery product. But for most of us, low usage usually means we\u2019ve built something that doesn\u2019t help people achieve more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We\u2019re told to celebrate failure, because that\u2019s how we learn \u2013 and while that\u2019s correct, many of these failures could have been avoided. How about if we could fail before our idea reached production? Remember, that each idea that reaches production has a cost above and beyond research, design and development.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38703,"featured_media":779326,"template":"","meta":{"msr-url-field":"","msr-podcast-episode":"","msrModifiedDate":"","msrModifiedDateEnabled":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"_classifai_error":"","msr-content-parent":616842,"msr_hide_image_in_river":0,"footnotes":""},"research-area":[],"msr-locale":[268875],"msr-post-option":[],"class_list":["post-779293","msr-blog-post","type-msr-blog-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","msr-locale-en_us"],"msr_assoc_parent":{"id":616842,"type":"group"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post\/779293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/msr-blog-post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38703"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post\/779293\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":779332,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-blog-post\/779293\/revisions\/779332"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"msr-research-area","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/research-area?post=779293"},{"taxonomy":"msr-locale","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-locale?post=779293"},{"taxonomy":"msr-post-option","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newed.any0.dpdns.org\/en-us\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/msr-post-option?post=779293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}