A 7 year old’s journey to build grit through lessons in design thinking and entrepreneurship…with some help from her mom. Think of it like Product Management 101, but with a 1st grader.
….
A recap
To get all the details of Elena’s design thinking journey, I recommend you start with Part 1.
In Part 10, Elena switched gears and took a look at the competitive landscape. Through that process, she learned:
- You don’t have to be the first one or the only one in the market. You just need to be different, be better in some unique way.
- When you visualize your data, like with a map of the competitive landscape, it helps you understand the data in a different way.
Competitor Analysis
Now that she has an understanding of the competitive landscape, Elena is ready to learn more about key competitors.
We do a little online shopping and buy a couple interesting bedtime tools.
“Why is Elena getting so many toys?” Luisa asks. Luisa is Elena’s 5 year old sister.
“These aren’t for Elena. They are for the company,” I try to explain.
“They’re for testing,” Elena adds.
“Does that mean I can play with them too?” Luisa asks.
“No.” “Yes.” Elena and I answer at the same time.
“But this is my idea,” Elena says, with a drawn out emphasis on the “my.”
“In a business, you can have lots of people helping to make it successful,” I say.
Elena doesn’t want to share. This is tough for adults too. Your idea is your baby and giving up control to others, who may do things differently than you, can be a hard thing to do voluntarily. But at the very least, to grow and scale, you need to delegate.
Elena is not at the grow and scale stage, but there are other benefits to inviting others to contribute. By including other people in the process, you bring additional points of view and experiences to the table. This may result in better ideas and better outcomes. For example, if we hadn’t invited Luisa to play Crazy 8s, there would be no Dream Squid, and the Dream Squid is a pretty cool idea.
In this instance, I’m the Mom so I don’t have to sit back and hope Elena decides to collaborate with her sister. Sometimes as the leader, you need to set the expectation. “You need to share with your sister and let her help. Be inclusive.”
The Competition
Elena and Luisa evaluate the following bedtime tools:
- Slumberkins — stuffed animal
- Moon Pals — weighted stuffed animal + book
- Dream Journal — paperback journal from Amazon
- Luna Blanket — weighted blanket (we already owned this)
- Moshi — bedtime and mindfulness app (we already owned this)
Over the course of two weeks, Elena and Luisa individually try out all of the items. After they are done, we sit down and capture their thoughts.
This isn’t an exercise to only point out how our ideas are better and tear down the competition (although, this is ironically sometimes called a competitor tear down). It is important to look at your competition openly and truthfully so you can recognize their strengths as well as their weaknesses.
Elena decides to frame it as what the competition does well and what they could do better. She likes all of the items and doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings because “they worked hard on their ideas.”
I help set up a table in Mural, the collaboration app we like to use. Uncle Nick works at Mural. Hi, Uncle Nick!
We go through each item and Elena and Luisa share what they liked and thought could be better.
Overall, the girls enjoyed each of the items, and there was nothing bad about any of them, only some nice to have suggestions to improve them.
The “Could do Better” column inspires Elena and Luisa to think of ways they can create even better solutions. For example, a snuggly book that doesn’t give you paper cuts. That would be pretty neat.
What’s next?
Once we are done, Elena is eager to start on the next thing.
“Now what?” Elena asks. “Do we start making stuff to sell?”
“Not yet. You might want to iterate first. Do you remember what iterate means?” I ask.
Here is her explanation of “iterate.” (Her face is painted from our trip to the zoo that morning. A red panda, I think?)
Out of the trees to see the forest.
It is easy to feel lost at this point, to not know what step to take next.
Whenever I feel like that, I get out of the trees and look back up at the forest.
Do you remember in Part 4, we talked about the three requirements for a “good” problem according to David Bland? This is Elena’s forest.
A good problem to solve is:
- Desirable: Do customers want to solve this problem? And when Elena gets to solutions later on, do customers want to solve this problem in this way?
- Feasible: Can Elena feasibly make the yet to be identified solution (with help)?
- Viable: Does it make financial sense for Elena to make and sell the yet to be identified solution?
Elena is on “desirability,” and she has been working to answer these questions:
- Is the problem experienced by a large enough segment of real people (future customers)? Elena shouldn’t waste her time building a solution for a teeny tiny market. — YES
- Does the solution she decides to create actually solve the problem? — Waiting for beta tester feedback. This feedback might lead to an iteration or two.
- Does the solution solve the problem in a different, better way than other alternative solutions? — Not really. How might we solve the problem in a uniquely different, better way?
Back to Elena’s question — what’s next? Sounds like it’s almost time to iterate!
…
Want to know what Elena does next?
Follow, like, subscribe or whatever the kids are saying nowadays to get the latest update on Elena’s journey → Medium | Instagram | Linkedin | Twitter
You can also join this email list for an early bird announcement of the launch of Elena’s yet to be determined solution. She is still a ways away from this, but it’s never too early to start building your Kickstarter list!
