Kill Your Products Quickly
One effective way to develop your product is to try and get it to fail early
Introduce real-life testing
I supported a project with a growing business back in 2009. The company had been working on a new antimicrobial cleaner in its portfolio, and it had outstanding results in the laboratory. It had the cleaning power of bleach, but without the damaging effect bleach has on surfaces, and it created a residual protection on the surface. After months of securing funding, designing trials and planning with the cleaning and clinical staff, the project began. At that time, it was not a regulatory requirement to test the product in a clinical setting; results from a laboratory test was sufficient. However, the company wanted data from a clinical setting to support their future marketing claims. Use cases like this are always key to demonstrate the value you are creating with your product.
Within days of it testing in a hospital, although the antimicrobial properties it had were confirmed through swab tests, the product was not well received. It became apparent that the product was inadequate for its purpose. On application, the product left a prominent smear on all cleaned surfaces. Cleaning staff were rinsing off the product and adding in other time-consuming, compensatory steps to the cleaning process to overcome the streaking. Patients also gave unprompted feedback complaining that the washed area adjacent to their bed still looked dirty. This was such a significant finding that the project and product development was stopped with immediate effect.
Embracing failure
The company was surprisingly pleased. Many companies with physical products don’t choose to test them with their end-users until late in the development pipeline. Unfortunately, unless regulation demands it, this means more investment is made on product development and sales and marketing activities when they are potentially not fit-for-purpose. It is too easy to continue to develop a product based on effectiveness without testing acceptability. This failed trial gave the business a choice on whether to entirely kill the product and build something new, or they could reformulate it. This happened before sales and marketing budgets were ringfenced or wasted.
What we learn from the tech world about this approach
The majority of my latter years have been spent with technology-driven businesses. They have the “design thinking” mentality of building end-user input and testing early in the process. Projects and products can be killed much sooner and at a far lower cost by the development of minimal viable products (MVPs) and the introduction of early user testing. This can happen within weeks or months of development, whereas with many physical products, the assumption made about acceptability is left untested for many more month or even years. All assumptions should be tested at an early stage too, to lead to a more fit-for-purpose product.
Find your champions
Early adopters, these are the users who will be some of the first to buy and use your product, love to test what you have. If you develop your product with the consideration of it being helpful to kill it early and therefore ensure end-users get an opportunity to test and inform its development, you will find your product champions too.
If you can involve key people in your early testing, if they like what you have, they will often become your product champions, pulling your company name and product into many further conversations.
Find your early adopters and influencers
Consider who in an ideal world who you would like to test your product and consider who these might be for scale. Who are the influencers and stakeholders in the market in which you are working? Ask yourself, who would I want to be promoting the benefits of using my product with their peers and networks?
For example, in the case of this type of healthcare cleaning product, the stakeholders and potential champions were the:
- Policymakers — infection prevention leads, understanding current research and setting policy for the organisation
- Beneficiaries — the senior medical and nursing staff, responsible for the environment in which they were treating their patients
- End Users — the cleaning contractor leads, following strict cleaning protocols to ensure cleaning policy was adhered to
- Influencers — estates leads who were dealing with the damage bleach caused on surfaces and were looking for alternative products, and the
- Enablers — the purchasing staff responsible for the procurement of cleaning contracts and solutions.
All teams were part of the initial trial design and had an interest in being aware of its outcome. Had the product been acceptable, their influence would have extended beyond the organisation.
For effective product development and adoption, there are a number of key influencers and stakeholders that will shape your product development and strategy for scaling your product. They must be determined for every product.
Embrace the potential for failure in order to create a better product.
Unless you are prepared for your product to fail, you will only develop your product in a way that initially safeguards it against failure. However, if you avoid this as part of your development process, any lacking features or poor performance will only be exposed once it is launched. It is far better to risk your product failing quickly and have the opportunity for early corrective action, than for it to die when it hits the market.
Bethan Bishop is The Impact Mentor. Collaboration is at her core and she loves to interrogate complexity and make it simple. She writes and publishes articles daily to support business founders and leaders on their journey to impact, including some personal reflection. With over 20 years working in research, innovation management and healthcare, Beth works as a consultant and mentor and you can connect more with her at www.bethanbishop.com
