Design Thinking for Business: Finding User-Problem Fit

When you are building a product or business from the ground up, your success or failure will be defined by product-market fit. ‘Product-Market Fit’ is the degree to which the product or service you are creating is aligned with the needs and wants of a commercially viable group of customers in the market. The essential mission of every founding team is to achieve product-market fit before they run out of runway (the money they have raised from investors).

Beyond Product-Market Fit

However, most people don’t work in start ups or new product teams, most of us work with and for existing businesses of the going concern. Existing businesses (by the nature of their existence) have already achieved product-market fit. Their primary product is scaling or has scaled to meet the market and the organisation is focused on delivery.

While firms can (and do) lose product-market fit, most of the problems people encounter in their day-to-day work are not issues of whether your product meets the needs of your customer. Instead, they are…