Momentum - Business to Business Online Magazine April 2017 | Page 30

Why Even The Most Innovative
By: Cynthia Rando
Products Fail
Sophic Synergistics
I have spent a considerable amount of time working with start-up
companies and these companies all seek to provide one thing, a successful
market innovation. Considering the statistics, most entrepreneurs will
not succeed or it will take them several attempts before they do achieve
that level of success. Game changing market disruptions are generally
the exception and not the rule. For the entrepreneur, there are many
causes including: lack of funding or investor support, no distinct value
proposition, timing issues with the market, lack of project planning, no
understanding of what it requires to bring a product to market, and no
true target market for their innovation. However, most entrepreneurs
fail for a more basic human reason. Specifically, they have not successfully
developed a solution that solves a true problem in the world or addresses a need. In many cases, entrepreneurs fall
victim to developing technology to build a better mouse trap or are lured into thinking that simply the act of advancing
technology will drive business success automatically.
The reality is that business and product/service innovation success are contingent on those we develop the solutions
for and the problems we are able to solve. You must always ask yourself, “How will this technology improve the current
situation for my target user?” “Is it enough of an improvement that it outweighs the cost of implementation or the
impact to the users regarding change?” That’s right, although you may have developed a solution that solves a problem
this is not a guarantee that it will be a success. You must also consider the existing environment that your product/
service will be used within and what the downstream impacts will be to your end user and those who are also part of
the eco-system. Ultimately, you must be able to make the business case to your market that the innovation is indisputably
worth the cost. Keeping in mind that the decision makers are frequently not your users whose problems you are solving
and may not actually base their decisions solely on that metric alone.
Tips for Success
Benchmark
To combat all of the forces working against you as an entrepreneur, it is essential to benchmark existing methods that
are similar to or related to the solution you are providing. Benchmarking will help you gain insight into what the current
methods address well and where the pain points are with the existing technology or solution. The benchmark comparison
will help give you a reference point for communicating the cost and benefit analysis for potential stakeholders. It will also
ensure that you have a basic understanding of the users, the environment, and the tasks involved with your innovation.
User Research
There is much more to defining a market than simply conducting market research. You must also conduct user research
to ensure that there is a distinct need in the market place or a problem in need of solving. To be clear, market and user
research are not the same type of analyses. Market research will only tell you that there is a potential market and a
possibility that a need exists within this potential market space. The user research will tell you what the specific market
demographic is and what need actually exists. The information you gather from user research will often lead you to a
drastically different solution than if you had stopped your analysis at the market level and proceeded to product design
and development. Specifically, leading you to develop a solution that has much greater odds of success compared to one
derived from market research alone.
User Testing
Once you have identified your users from benchmarking and user research analysis, include representatives from this
population as part of your testing plan. The representative user should be considered throughout the life cycle of design
and implementation (product to market). Testing multiple times at low, mid and high fidelity is strongly recommended
and prototypes should be tested in the environments of use or as close as reasonably possible. The user testing results
are then integrated back into the design life cycle in the form of design requirements. Most entrepreneurs undervalue
this step and the criticality associated with translating user behaviors into design requirements to increase usability
and reduce the potential for error or injury. The data obtained during these tests will also help you build your value
proposition for key decision makers, increasing your odds of user adoption and market success.
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MOMENTUM / April 2017