How high time to value can sabotage your product
In the San Francisco Bay Area, tech workers spend most of their time thinking about the latest and the next thing. We often forget that technology of the distant past can teach valuable, timeless lessons about the fundamentals around why people adopt new technologies.
In this post, I’ll explain what crossbows and firearms on the battlefields of 16th Century Europe can teach Product Managers today.
CW: Violence, weapons, and warfare from this point forward.
When I was growing up, one of my favorite places to go was the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). A few days ago, I was excited to find a show on Prime Video called “Museum Secrets,” where the first episode focused on the ROM’s collections. While the episode covered a lot of ground, it was the segment about why guns replaced the crossbow in European warfare that reminded me how important time to value is in making a successful product.
A Tale of Two Weapons
Crossbows were used on European battlefields between the 10th and early 16th centuries. They were not a new or exclusively European phenomenon. However, they enabled a new class of professional warriors who didn’t need the same lifelong training that archers using a longbow did. It made it easier to train new fighters, and cheaper to replace them where necessary.
By the 1520s, guns eclipsed crossbows.
To our modern ears, even though hunters still use the crossbow, this development might seem obvious. But in the early 16th century, guns were very different than the firearms we have today. In the video, it takes about a minute and multiple steps and pieces of equipment to load the gun, as well as requiring the soldier to carry and pour gunpowder into the chamber and the barrel and often light a fuse to get it to fire, which looks kind of terrifying. The crossbow takes about the same amount of time to arm in the video but requires just the weapon and an arrow. The gun requires gunpowder poured into two chambers, two wads, a lead ball, a rod, and a fuse.
When I watched the professional marksmen fire the crossbow and the gun in “Museum Secrets,” the crossbow seemed like the superior weapon. It’s when the curator tries to fire that why the gun won out becomes apparent: it’s easier to learn to fire it accurately, and it can do a lot more damage to a target.
The “Schmuck Factor”
When I first saw the segment, I thought about this as an ease of use story, but quickly realized that’s not exactly right — early guns were hard to load, even if they were easier to fire accurately. And there was switching cost: adopting guns required that every operator learn new technology and possibly purchase a new weapon.
What the curator says at the end of the segment made me think about it differently.
What that means is you could take someone off the street and make them a competent soldier in less time. In the segment, they refer to this as the gun’s “schmuck factor.”
It’s also important to consider the “You” in the curator’s statement: the people in power — ranging from militia leaders to local lords to monarchs — who were responsible for maintaining a functioning fighting force.
Guns enabled military leaders to quickly train a non-professional “army” on a weapon that they could get reasonably good at using very quickly. And if those soldiers were lost in battle or reinforcements were needed, training their replacements was relatively easy. In other words, guns enabled a rapid and comparatively high return on time and resources spent on recruiting, feeding, and transporting soldiers, while creating a bigger pool of eligible recruits.
While the adoption of guns wasn’t without controversy, it had clear benefits for military leaders. Compared to the crossbow, guns made the average recruit deadlier, faster. And that helped leaders achieve their goal of winning wars.
Lessons for Product Management
What does this story about 16th Century guns and crossbows have to do with Product Management today?
My main takeaway is how crucial time to value can be in product success. And time to value comes down to the benefits of learning the technology, addressable market, and consistency of results.
Good UX isn’t enough; it helps, but it’s not essential if the user can be quickly trained to achieve consistent results.
The underdog product won out not because it had better features per se, but because less training and aptitude was needed for people to use it and help reach the ultimate goal.
Even if the underdog product requires operators to learn an entirely new technology, if it’s not a significant investment and they see an immediate payoff, the product has a chance of success.
If you’re building a new product competing with a popular alternative, be sure that:
- Using it is easy to learn for a wide range of people in your target group
- Demonstrating that consistent, superior results are possible when that basic knowledge is in place
If you’re the owner of the incumbent product and a new player like this comes along, consider:
- Leveraging existing expertise of your user base to make the product more effective and switching cost higher
- Improving the quality and consistency of results your core product delivers
- Making the product easier to pick up and use for a broader base of new users
History can teach us a lot about how to develop successful products, whether you are managing today’s ubiquitous standard or the next new thing.
