Hey there ! So I just finished reading the book The Right It* by Alberto Savoia and here is my review.
The Right It ?
“The Right It” is any product or project that beats the odds of market failure: “The law of market failure”. The premise of the book is that the vast majority of new products are almost certainly doomed to fail when they hit their target market. Which is statistically true. No matter how the product idea may initially sound great — in theory — or how competently the product is built, more often than not, it will Fail Big Time. The book gives the example of Google: incredibly successful, creates hugely popular products but has a very long trail of failed products nonetheless. Google Of course is just an example (The author is a former Engineering Director at Google), Apple, Coco-Cola, Amazon and countless others you never heard of have fallen victims to the ruthless beast of market failure.
After the author establishes that most new product, even when competently executed, are doomed to fail, he goes on to explain why and in my opinion does a great job at that. According to the author the reason is that typically, product development work (ideation, design, development, test, etc …) happens in the very safe harbor of thought, assumptions and opinions: what the author calls “ThoughtLand”. The closest the product ever gets the users and the market is usually through market research. According to the author, market research (when you can afford it) is very ineffective to predict the market reception of a product and to test your initial assumptions about the product/market fit. Opinions whether from family, friends, colleagues or even experts are absolutely useless when it comes to test the validity of a product idea. The takeaway is, don’t waste your time and money doing market research and asking for opinions. Again, the author does a good job explaining why he thinks so.
You might think a book about the inevitability of failure and the futility of competency is depressing and you would be right. But after the premises are established by the author, he goes on to introduce and describe tools and techniques to help you prevent market failure. Central to the book, is the concept of Pretotype: a term coined by the author and an alteration of the word Prototype. Pretotypes differ from prototypes as we know them in that they are orders of magnitude cheaper and quicker to make. They also serve a different purpose from that of a prototype. The difference in nature and purpose calls for a dedicated word according to the author. I personally tend to agree with him. And I think precise, unambiguous language is preferable to confusion and semantics so I don’t mind a little barbarism.
Whereas a prototype serves to prove that an idea can be built into a product, a pretotype servers to check if the product idea makes market and/or economic sense in the first place. It serves to do a reality check of your assumptions about an idea in terms of how likely it is to succeed in its target market and to which extent. How? By translating a product idea to a testable hypothesis (Market Engagement Hypothesis) and using pretotyping to collect data. The author described several surprising real world examples of pretotyping methods and applies them to example ideas. He then proceeds to explain how to process the collected data.
To be actionable, the data must to have what the author calls skin in the game. The author defines exactly what skin-in-the-game data is and gives a rating scale to attribute skin in the game points to every piece of data gathered via pretotyping. The method presented by the author allows, literally, to score a product idea and based on that score decide if it should be dismissed, tweaked and re-evaluated or is it a Right It. How cool is that?
The book is certainly not a recipe for success and the author fortunately never claims so, far from it. In fact a product can still eventually result in failure, as the book explains it, but the odds of failure are substantially lower. Ultimately, the books gives us a framework that allows to avoid a bad product idea a — Wrong It — and market failure. The twist here I can say, is that Not Failing is already a win.
Final Thoughts
I think the book is a great addition to the product development library. The author does a great job demystifying product development. The book is practical, down-to-earth, with some funny wordplay, making it a real joy to read. I learned a lot reading this book. I cannot recommend it enough to anyone working or interested in product development.
It’s Definitely a Right It.
