I once read the book ‘Originals’ written by Adam Grant. It is an amazing book. As with many other books, a lot of what I read is now lodged somewhere in the archives of my memory save a few salient points that stood out for me.
One of such points was the reference to John Legend’s music career. For the first time ever, I discovered that John was once a management consultant who straddled his music on the side for a while before taking the plunge (mind-blown!). According to the author, he took night gigs at local bars and restaurants to ‘validate’ his original music before launching out as a recording artiste.
I’m sure this is cool information but where am I going with it?
As some of you may have figured out, the author was trying to make a point for hedging risk; he posited that innovation and risk-taking must not promote recklessness and ‘sensationalism’ as determinants for success. There is such a thing as managing your risk portfolio and hedging bets before putting both legs in.
While I can’t verify every detail of this story, I can however extrapolate and apply this lesson. I know quite a number of us love a good ‘dropped-out-of-school' or 'quit-that-job-to-build-the-next-homerun-product' type of story. It conveys some boldness and opens us up to a realm of possibilities where if we take a chance we just may get all we hoped for on the other side.
Well, the reality is that we often don’t hear the stories of products/businesses that never materialised or went on to become unicorns despite the courage, grit and passion of the owners. While I love a sensational story on risk-taking as much as the next person, I’ve come to realise that the existence of a discipline called risk management is an indicator that risk should be...yea, managed! Even when innovating.
It may not yet be the right timing for that product in the market. You may be targeting the wrong market. People may not like it. People may like it at first but not see any use for it down the line. Do you really want to discover all of these after quitting your job, taking a loan and pumping a few millions into a software project?
The more important question is “do you really have to?”
Pretotyping.
No, not prototyping and no, not MVP-ing. Pretotyping.
Pretotyping assumes that every great idea is at best a hypothesis. It allows you to test the viability of a concept with minimal resources before making a committal decision. With sufficient clarity on your hypothesis - what your product is and what problem it solves for your target customer - the process of pretotyping may help you realise that you don’t even have to 'build' anything to validate your hypothesis.
Pretotyping helps you empirically answer these questions:
- What problem am I solving?
- Who am I solving it for?
- Are they interested in my product?
- Are they willing to pay for it?
- Will they pay for it on an on-going basis? (As applicable)
Of course, this isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution neither am I suggesting that pretotyping will eliminate all uncertainty. However, a wise man once said “all models are wrong but some are useful”. I tend to agree. While pretotyping may not solve every problem, I can guarantee that it will help banish one-track thinking and open you up to creative solutions.
I intend to talk more about this interesting process I discovered a few years back even as I keep learning myself.
