5 Points to Build Your Next Empire.
In my current role at Neu Citizen as Director of Customer Experience Design, I am constantly presented with new ideas. From clients, co-workers, consultants and friends — everyone has an idea. The challenge is in evaluating these ideas and determining which ones merit exploration.
As a logic tool I employ “5-Star Criteria”. If one negative aspect of a product idea is immediately obvious, I challenge the ideators to present at least five other factors that give the product a marketplace advantage. This way I can quickly evaluate the potential of a new product idea without getting into the more lengthy questions that follow.
You may be thinking that a successful product only needs one advantageous feature to be successful, and you are correct. Once you put in the hours to get a product to prototype, do some more market research, watch for similar products coming online, you and your team will often find that several of the other “positive” advantages, evaporate.
This “advantage evaporation” may be caused by several factors, but it always due to information interference or “data noise.” Perhaps an investor is really in love with this product idea, and just wants to power it to market. Perhaps the ideator doesn’t want to look too hard at the competition for fear of being influenced or copying features. Perhaps you are not the only team that saw the same need at the same time and took advantage of the same technology to produce a similar product.
Now, we don’t immediately throw out an idea because it scores low on The 5-Star Criteria. We do however realize the increased risk and challenges in pursuing an idea that is only 2–3 stars. Beyond the basic marketing questions of “What is the customer need this product services?” and “What is the market?” This is a process of asking, “How can we?” followed by “What’s it cost?” so we can get to, “What’s it worth?”
How can we overcome these challenges?
What is the cost in effort to produce this?
What might this be worth to our customers?
You will often find that the last question, “worth,” is the first answered. Products and companies are often launched on presumptions about servicing a customer need. If the answer to the first two questions is steep (challenges and cost), then you need to ask, “Should we be the ones to build this?”
Be wary of “additional features” presented as a new product. These are often brilliant ideas that might help improve a product, but features that are easily copied and taken-over by the market leading product owners.
When you are presented with a brilliant idea and have to wonder, “Why didn’t someone else build this?” You may find that in fact, someone else did. Do your research, or better yet, have your ideators do the research for you. Of course you are going to follow up and verify.
If you answer “challenges”, “cost”, “worth” and still want to proceed, then you have a solid product idea. Proceed to prototype.
See below for the full worksheet:
