The Right It

by Alberto Savoia

  Tactic 4: Tweak It and Flip It Before You Quit It

  Don’t let disappointing YODA from your initial set of experiments discourage you prematurely. The Right It might be just a few tweaks away—and pretotyping can help you find those tweaks. Let me explain.

  Most new product ideas, even the craziest-sounding ones, are usually based on not-so-crazy premises; the people behind those ideas are rarely lunatics (although I have met a few who would qualify). More often than not, they are people who have a decent understanding of the industry, believe that their idea solves a real problem for real customers, and are convinced that there is a bona fide market opportunity to take advantage of—and they are usually right about that. The problem is that their original idea is most likely in the close-but-no-cigar zone of that market opportunity. Let me illustrate, literally, what I mean.

  In the following image, the light gray area represents The Right It zone for a specific market opportunity, while the dark gray area represents The Wrong It zone.

  The market opportunity is there, and it’s real. But not all products that address it will be successful: they may be too expensive, too big, too complicated, come in the wrong color, have the wrong name, and so forth. The market can be very, very fussy and fastidious. If you don’t come up with a product combination it likes (i.e., The Right It), it will reject your idea—even if, in many other respects, your product does a good job of addressing the problem or opportunity. If you are really committed, or interested, or passionate about a specific market problem or opportunity, stick with that market, but tweak and experiment with variations on the original idea.

  Let’s assume that you’ve run several pretotyping experiments with your initial idea (represented as It1 in the next image), and the data shows conclusively that your idea—as it currently stands—is The Wrong It.

  You are disappointed—and that’s understandable. But in the process of testing that idea, you have discovered interesting facts about your target market. Perhaps you learned that one of your key Thoughtland-based assumptions was dead wrong (e.g., most people don’t think that $8 is too expensive for packaged sushi). Or you observed that 80% of packaged-sushi shoppers carefully inspect the label to check the “packaged on” time stamp—and put the box back if that time indicates that the box is more than a day old. With each experiment, you gained valuable YODA you can use to inform and guide your next step.

  Even if the original idea for Second-Day Sushi proves to be The Wrong It, it is quite plausible that somewhere in the Thoughtland neighborhood from which Second-Day Sushi originated dwells an idea and business model for budget packaged sushi that is The Right It. Try testing a weekly subscription service and tweak the name and slogan to suggest convenience rather than a lack of freshness: “Sushi2You: The convenient and affordable sushi subscription service.”

  And if the market does not respond to that particular tweak, explore and pretotype a few more tweaks (e.g., “Groupie Sushi: Order sushi as a group and save”) until you find a combination that is The Right It.

  But what if, even after a bunch of tweaks, you still haven’t found The Right It?

  At that point you should consider the very real possibility that, as the image below shows, The Right It for the budget-sushi idea does not exist; all variations on that idea are destined to fail, because too many people associate cheap sushi with bad sushi—and bad sushi with all sorts of nasty consequences.

  What now? Well, if your heart is set on being in the packaged-sushi business one way or another, it’s time to turn up your creativity by several notches and explore another set of variations on the packaged-sushi theme.

  I used to think of myself as somewhat of an expert in creativity, a master of brainstorming, until I met a real expert on the subject: Stanford professor Tina Seelig.* In 2016 I had the honor of teaching a graduate course titled “Creativity and Innovation” alongside Tina. The objective of the course was to teach students how to develop innovative solutions to problems by combining creativity techniques (in order to come up with a large initial number of ideas) with pretotyping techniques (in order to test, validate, and whittle the initial set of ideas down to the ones most likely to succeed). I focused on teaching pretotyping, and when Tina was teaching creativity techniques, I sat alongside the students, paying rapt attention and furiously taking notes.

  In one of the class exercises, students were assigned a challenge (e.g., stop people from texting while driving) and had to come up with at least one hundred innovative ideas that could help solve the problem. As two-time Nobel Prize–winner Linus Pauling famously said, “The best way to have a great idea is to have a lot of ideas.” But coming up with a lot of ideas to solve a single problem sounds easier than it actually is—if you don’t know the right techniques. Most people struggle to get past forty or fifty ideas in this exercise and conclude that they are simply not creative enough.

  Tina would strongly disagree with that conclusion; she believes that creativity is a skill that we can all learn and proves her point by teaching a set of techniques that makes the “one hundred ideas” exercise one hundred times easier. In one of the class’s most memorable and effective lessons, using a Harvard case study about Cirque du Soleil as an example, Tina showed the students how to take their preconceived notions and assumptions about a specific idea and flip them over to reveal alternatives that might lead to a successful variation on an existing idea. In an article she posted on Medium.com, Tina describes the exercise as follows:

  One of my favorite exercises involves unpacking all the assumptions you have and then turning them upside down to reveal alternatives.

  In my creativity course, I use a Harvard case study about Cirque du Soleil that gives students a chance to hone their skills at challenging assumptions. The backdrop is the 1980s, when the circus industry was in trouble. Performances were predictable and stale, the number of customers was diminishing, and animal treatment was under attack. It didn’t seem like a good time to start a new circus. But that is exactly what Guy Laliberté, a street performer in Canada, did by challenging every assumption about what a circus could be.

  After showing a video clip from the 1939 Marx Brothers movie, At the Circus, I ask the students to list all the assumptions we have for a traditional circus: a big tent, animals, cheap tickets, barkers selling souvenirs, several acts performing at once, clowns, popcorn, strong men, flaming hoops, etc.

  I then ask them to turn these things upside down—to imagine the exact opposite of each one.

  For example, the new list would include a small tent, no animals, expensive seats, no barkers, one act performing at a time, and no clowns or popcorn. They then pick the things they want to keep from the traditional circus and the things they want to change. The result is a brand-new type of circus, à la Cirque du Soleil. And we all know that Cirque du Soleil is thriving, while the traditional circus is essentially gone.

  Once we do this exercise with the circus industry, it’s easy to apply to other industries and institutions that are ripe for change, including fast-food restaurants, hotels, airlines, education, and even courtship and marriage. When you get the hang of it, this is an easy, back-of-the-envelope exercise you can use to reevaluate all aspects of your life and career. The key is to take the time to clearly identify every assumption. This is usually the hardest part, since assumptions are often so integrated into our view of the world that it’s hard to see them. However, with a little practice, it becomes a useful way to look at your options in a fresh light.*

  Let’s apply this creativity technique to packaged sushi. Since we’ve already explored going the cheaper route with Second-Day Sushi, let’s have some fun and go the other way. Let’s flip our fishy idea on its head and go upscale: “Superior Sushi: the freshest and highest-quality packaged sushi you can buy.” Who knows? We might learn that although there’s not much of a market for cheaper, less-fresh packaged sushi, there is a strong market for extra fresh sushi that comes in a premium package. All we need to
do is make a list of what people typically assume about or associate with packaged sushi and then come up with alternatives suitable for our Superior Sushi idea. For example:

  Packaged Sushi Superior Sushi

  $7–10 price $14–20 price

  Up to 3 days old Guaranteed fresh

  Cheap plastic box Fancy bamboo box

  Fake wasabi Real wasabi

  Cheap soy sauce packet Premium soy sauce in a cute little glass bottle

  Yum, I am getting hungry just thinking about it. I must admit that I like the Superior Sushi idea a whole lot better than Second-Day Sushi. I can even imagine myself spending an extra few dollars to get fresher fish, real wasabi (not that artificially colored green stuff that comes in tubes), a bamboo box that I can save and use for something else, and a cute little glass bottle of premium soy sauce instead of those plastic soy packets. But that’s just me in Thoughtland. How many other people would actually spend close to $20 for packaged sushi—regardless of how fancy the packaging is? I am sure that by now you know what you need to do in order to answer that question.

  By the way, you don’t necessarily have to wait for a new product idea to turn out to be The Wrong It before you start tweaking it and exploring other ideas. Our tools and techniques give you the power to test any idea quickly and efficiently; that means that now you are in a position to test several different ideas (or different tweaks on a basic idea) before committing to a specific one. You don’t have to come up with one hundred different versions of an idea (although, why not?), but you should think of at least a few different ones, because chances are your first idea may not be the best idea.

  Tweaks Beat Pivots

  Most people understand that it’s unlikely that the first version of their idea is The Right It. They know that few ideas come out of Thoughtland fully baked and ready to succeed. They assume that they will have to do some tweaking. Unfortunately, they do their tweaking in Thoughtland, using opinions and OPD instead of YODA to guide them. No wonder most ideas flop miserably when they hit the market.

  The only way to discover what the market really wants and tweak accordingly is to make real contact with it. Don’t just ask the market what it thinks it wants; put a pretotype of your idea out in the market and demand some skin in the game as evidence of interest. The sooner you do that, the better, because the longer you wait, the more painful and expensive the lessons get. And eventually you will find yourself too beaten up, too discouraged, and with no resources left to try other tweaks.

  These days, the term pivot is tossed around a lot by entrepreneurs, product managers, and venture capitalists. A pivot is generally understood to be a major change in the fundamental idea or market hypothesis for a new product or business. You are forced to pivot because—surprise, surprise—the original idea turned out to be The Wrong It. The problem with most pivots is that, unlike tweaks, they happen after the team has already invested significant time and money in developing the original idea. I participated in several pivots earlier in my career, but we didn’t use that term at the time. We just said, “We screwed up!” When the word pivot enters the conversation in a product meeting, it’s inevitably accompanied by that most pungent of aromas: eau de desperation. By then, the team will have usually wasted most of their resources on The Wrong It, severely limiting their options. It does not have to happen this way.

  If you pretotype your idea early on and make your tweaks along the way, you will avoid traumatic pivots and dramatically increase your chances of eventually landing The Right It. Ten tiny tweaks are better than one painful pivot.

  8

  Complete Example: BusU

  We are now ready to see how the various tools and tactics we’ve learned fit together. I’ll pick an idea for a new business, and we’ll work through the entire process from Thoughtland, to data, to decision. I will not only show you the steps I’d take, but also give you insights into my thought process as the plan unfolds. Keep in mind that this is only one of a myriad of possible ways we can apply these techniques. There is no single best approach. If you think you would do things differently or better, that’s great; it means I’ve taught you well.

  The new business idea we’ll use for this example popped into my head while crawling along in commute traffic on Highway 101 on my way from my home in Silicon Valley to downtown San Francisco for a morning meeting. A few years ago, this drive would have taken about forty-five minutes. Today, with the business and building boom all over the Bay Area, it can take up to two hours to cover less than 40 miles, and thousands of people make this three- to four-hour round-trip commute every single day. What a waste—and what an opportunity!

  That morning, while staring at a river of red brake lights, I came up with the idea for BusU: turn commuter buses into classrooms and commute time into learning time. While inching toward my destination, I even had time to come up with a slogan: “Take a class on the bus.”

  I don’t believe, of course, that I was the first to have had this idea. Others may have already thought of such a business. Some may have even tried to build it, and we may learn something from their attempts. But by now you should know how I feel about using other people’s success or failure with similar ideas. We might take OPD into account, but that’s no substitute for running our own experiments and collecting our YODA.

  Below is a rough outline of the key steps we’ll take to collect that YODA and use it to guide our decisions. As you can see, we will be using all three sets of tools (thinking tools, pretotyping tools, analysis tools):

  Describe the original BusU idea.

  Identify BusU’s Market Engagement Hypothesis (MEH).

  Write BusU’s MEH in XYZ Hypothesis format.

  Hypozoom into xyz hypotheses we can test quickly.

  Identify a set of pretotyping experiments we can use to validate our hypotheses.

  Tactically prioritize experiments based on Distance to Data (DTD), Hours to Data (HTD), and Dollars to Data ($TD).

  Run the first set of experiments.

  Based on an objective analysis of the YODA from the experiments, determine the next steps.

  Remember—this is just our coarse, initial plan. Like all such plans, it’s likely to change once our idea makes contact with the market and we collect our first data. After we get going, we may find ourselves backtracking or jumping around in those steps quite a bit. For example, right in the middle of running our first pretotyping experiment, we may run into an unexpected obstacle or an opportunity that will dramatically affect our Market Engagement Hypothesis (e.g., California passes a law that makes it illegal to run businesses on buses). Or, as often happens, while working on it, our original idea morphs into a different and potentially much better or bigger idea. Prepare yourself to be surprised and to gain new insights, and don’t hesitate to revise any or all of your plans and hypotheses. You are entering unknown territory, so you should be flexible and adaptable. This is why Part III is called “Plastic Tactics.”

  But although our tactics may change, our guiding principles will not. We will use our tools to think clearly, test thoroughly, and analyze objectively.

  Thinking Clearly About Our Idea

  The Original Idea

  Here’s how, while stuck in traffic, I originally envisioned the BusU idea:

  By partnering with local universities, BusU will offer accredited college-level classes taught by top-rated professors while transporting professionals to and from work each day. The buses will be customized to resemble a classroom and will have a capacity of 30 to 50 students. We will begin by offering BusU service from San Francisco to Silicon Valley and back. The length of the commute is perfect for offering a standard fifty-minute class each way.

  To make the numbers work, we envision BusU as high-end executive and professional training, and it will be priced accordingly. We anticipate a fee of $3,000 for a ten-week course. This fee may seem high, but we expect that most high-tech companies that already subsidize continuing education and training for their
employees will cover at least part of the tuition.

  That’s a pretty good high-level description of our vision for BusU. We’ve even managed to add some interesting details and included some numbers—all of which will make writing the XYZ Hypothesis and xyz hypotheses easier. But before we do that, we must take the next critical step: identifying the Market Engagement Hypothesis (MEH).

  Market Engagement Hypothesis

  As we’ve seen in Part I, lasting business success requires that many factors and assumptions line up just right. For BusU to succeed, we must be able to find accredited universities and proven college professors willing to work with us; it must be possible—and not too expensive—to customize buses for classroom use without violating transportation safety standards; and so on. But in this case, as it is in the great majority of cases, the most important assumption we need to test and validate relates to market interest. Remember, “If there’s a market, there’s a way.” If there’s enough market interest, we will find ways to partner with schools, recruit professors, and meet transportation standards.

  Since the target customers for BusU are business professionals with long commutes, our MEH should be based on this segment of the population. Will enough professionals be willing to pay private university–level tuition to take a class on a bus?

  Here’s our first rough pass at the MEH:

  A lot of professionals with long commutes will pay university-level tuition to take buses with classes.

  It’s a start, but it’s too vague and fuzzy a description to be of much use. What’s “a lot of professionals”? How long is “a long commute”? How much is “university-level tuition”? We need to say it with numbers and express it in a way that can be tested by experiment and observation.