The Curse of "Good Enough"

To successfully launch a new product, several key ingredients are essential.? It needs to be either Better, Cheaper or Different-er than the alternatives.? Without one or more of these, it will fall into the twilight of the interesting but not needed.? Novel but not compelling.? A solution in search of a problem. Bill Gross (founder of IdeaLab) famously said you need to be 10X better than the incumbent to succeed.

The biggest obstacle to new product adoption is inertia. Users are reluctant to switch what they are comfortable doing. Even if the current solution comes with little pain points. Is the new thing so much better that I am going to risk change in my life?? Switching from one cereal to another is a low-risk proposition so sure, I’ll try the gluten-free one, why not?? However, giving up my truck and buying an EV?? That is going to have to be a game-changer in many ways.? With the solution I know, the outcome is predictable and “good enough”.?

Case in point, the Bag Cap.

During my stint in housewares,we were deep in the kitchen gadget battles in big-box retail.? We pushed 100’s of SKU’s a year and the appetite for new and novel solutions seemed endless.? During some user research we discovered an interesting behavior in the pantry category.? Consumers were using myriad ways to preserve the freshness of bagged products (rice, cereal, candy, etc.) all with limited success.? These items did not rate the purchase of a durable container but still hung around the pantry for weeks to months.? As is bound to happen, a sticky note in a brainstorm turned into a full-on NPD project because it was based on a KEY USER INSIGHT.? I can say this now because yours truly was running the show.

We developed a number of interesting ways to solve the problem.? We settled on a rigid ring with a silicone wrapper and cap that sealed on the bag. Open the bag, install the cap and now you have a resealable, instantly accessible way to store your stuff.? No brainer right? Way less expensive than the large molded bins. Well, not so fast.? In our rush to provide our users with convenience, we lost sight of our primary competition.? The chip clip that is rattling around in the junk drawer from 10 years ago that you got for free with the other thing you bought.? Is it made of food-safe silicone? No.? Does it seal the bag airtight? No.? Does it come in a rainbow of trend-right colors? No.? But it does have one thing.? It's “good enough” and you already have it.? The problem of sealing a bag does not rise to the importance of a $9.99 gadget.

We were not alone in this fallacy.? The product landscape is littered with this exact problem. If you want examples, look at Juicero, Segway or more recently Humane AI.? The moral to this story is that designers need to be vigilant against the urge to fall deeply and madly in love with an innovation that is good but not great. Good Enough is always the easy choice and a formidable competition.

"It's very easy to be different, it's very difficult to be better." -Jony Ive