Transcript

So you have identified a bunch of opportunities that you might want to solve with a tech product. How do you go from this varied list of items to something more akin to a product outline or strategy?

Hello and welcome to Product Nuggets. I'm Thomas Essl, and today I'll talk about how to go from exploring a whole range of different opportunities to confidently picking one and running with it. If you're curious about how to arrive at this point, listen to the previous two episodes on how to start a new product or business and identify opportunities.

If you're getting slightly impatient by now and ask, when we'll finally start making stuff and building a product, let me tell you, you're not alone in this. For better or for worse though, building things that have real impact and value requires more than having an idea in a genius lightbulb moment and starting to write code. Focusing on the right project is a project in itself. Einstein is reported to have once said: "If I were given an hour to solve a problem and my life depended on it, I would spend 40 minutes studying it, 15 minutes reviewing it and 5 minutes solving it.”

If, however, you are someone who always dreamed of starting a project or tech business but never felt like you had any good ideas, the good news is that anyone can do it. Contrary to what startup legends might make you believe, having good ideas isn't as much down to being a genius, but to putting in the work to generating, evaluating, and refining those ideas. So let's get on with it. At this point, the problem no longer is identifying something worthwhile working on that seems good or interesting, but choosing one problem from a large pool of possibilities. It's important not to just fall in love with any one idea and just look for validation. If you still favour the same one today that you were infatuated with at the start of the process, you may be the victim of bias. This is where getting the views of others really helps to shine a light at these opportunities from all angles and see them for what they are. As we move forward, try to involve other colleagues, friends, or family to discuss these opportunities and any early ideas they might turn into. If you are working with or are subject to other stakeholders in an organisation, try to get their views, but be cautious not to simply choose their favourites either. Communicate that you're following a process that's as objective as possible, to deliver the greatest value. Better still, invite them to take part. The next steps could be done on your own, but they work best in a collaborative workshop format with a small number of experts in different fields. Ideally, you'll have a group of people representing the domains of business, product, tech, and design. If you are on you own, try to get feedback from friends from those other backgrounds that you're lacking.

We'll start by reviewing our customer pain and gain points and any overarching themes written on post its. It helps to refresh your mind with what rationale went into each of them. Then, we'll try to prioritise them. Draw a diagram with the y-axis representing value of solving a problem, and the x-axis being the estimated feasibility of you being able to solve it. In other words how difficult would it be to do, over how worthwhile it would be. Look at all your post-its one axis at a time. I like to start with feasibility, arranging all post-its along the x-axis in terms of how solvable each problem is. Then, move them upwards to represent the value a solution might unlock. It's important to note that, especially when you are setting out to invent something new, you may not have the numbers to express value in monetary terms. Then, you can look at it as a function of how much pain this problem is causing to your potential customers, and how many of them are affected by it. You might not feel like this process isn't extremely accurate. But don't forget that you are not randomly moving these items around. Each move, as well as the content of the post-its themselves is informed by your research, understanding of the problem space, and expertise of the people in the room. Don't try to overcomplicate it with numerical values on each item making the evaluation seem more accurate than it is either. All we are looking for is a comparative assessment, helping us visualise which problems are the best match for our team. You may find that for some items you are not able to make a judgement, but prioritisation helps. If there is an item the feasibility of which you can't judge, but it is low value, you don't need to waste time on an investigation. Only if it is potentially carrying the highest value, you need to spend that time. Really, you just want to be clear on which post-its belong to the point closest to the so called goldilocks zone - the top-right of your diagram - where value and ease of implementation are highest.

Now it is time to shortlist opportunities. If there is one post-it that clearly stands out as the most valuable opportunity that is comparably easy to solve for, you're in luck and you can take a shortcut to just pick one. Sadly, this is rarely the case and so you'll likely need to shortlist two or three. If you feel a democratic process is necessary, you can do this via dot-voting, giving each member of your group three sticky dots to put on their favourite, and shortlisting the ones with the highest number of dots in the end. Otherwise, make the choice yourself.

Let's say you now have two opportunities or problem areas that are high value, and relatively doable in terms of solving for them. That's amazing! Now, to pick a winner, let's put some meat on them. For this, we'll use a framework to capture more details and assumptions about our project. This is where we gradually develop a problem to be solved into a concrete idea, project, and product. I like to use the Lean Business Canvas. If you work inside an organisation, you can try others, such as the Value Proposition Canvas, but there is a lot of overlap, so I'll focus on one of them for the time being. Either of those canvasses has the goal to make you think about, validate, and iterate on all the necessary pillars of your project, such as the problem and audience, solutions and competitive advantage, revenue streams, competition, and others. If you're not familiar with them, I suggest watching one of the many good YouTube videos out there explaining them. Start by putting down what you know. Start high level, and go into more detail over time. - I suggest starting with customer segments and the problem - this really shouldn't change anymore. Gradually try to answer as much as you can about the rest. Some boxes can be filled in through research. Others require you to generate and evaluate ideas. There are many good ideation techniques out there and I may well make an episode on them in the future. For now, I suggest trying what's called How-might-we questions. As in "How might we... generate revenue with this idea. When it comes to ideas for boxes such as Solutions and the high level concept, it's okay to put down a few. These will act as your hypotheses that you'll need to test, maybe even prototype, and validate with your customers, until there's only one main concept left. At some point during this process, one of your canvasses will be increasingly more convincing than the others. Then, you'll have found your project and can continue refining it, adding more fidelity to any experiments until they turn into a product.