How Do You Identify a Design Partner?

It should be fairly obvious by now that the best way to get to the market quickly is working with design partners from day one of your venture. But what are they exactly and how do you find them?

What Are You Looking For?

Communications professor Everett Rogers ‘diffusion of innovation’ model is a critical tool for understanding how new products gain acceptance. A simplified version divides the market for a product into three main groups – early adopters, mainstream users, and laggards. Early adopters of technology make up roughly 15% of the population, while mainstream users make up about 70%. Mainstream users don’t usually buy innovative products, so trying to build your product for the mass market is a losing strategy. Rather, you need to focus on the early adopters, who are not only most likely to buy a novel product, but they are also eager to help you design it so they get a product that works for them. ?So early adopters are the design partners (people or companies) you need to find to help you build your initial product.

Who is An Early Adopter?

Early adopters are people who love to be first. ?They like to try new things; they like to be seen as proponents of change and they crave to be drivers of change. They also tend to be independent and self-sufficient, which makes them ideal design partners; they are not afraid to make waves or push peoples’ buttons.?You know the type; they are the people who buy the first version of a product despite an outrageous price tag and lack of features. In their garage, you might still find the first Alexa, the first generation blue-ray DVD player, or even a vintage Macintosh.?In the workplace, you will find early adopters who will try new, unproven solutions because they believe these products can propel their companies forward, despite the risk of failure.

Who is a Good Partner?

A good partner is an early adopter who gets excited when you tell them what you are working on and then THEY immediately apply the concept to solve a problem they already have. Unlike most of us who need to be nurtured to understand why we would need a product; early adopters intuitively understand how a product works and how it can address their issues. These are the people who are always looking for a better mousetrap.

Conversations with these people are amazing. You don’t need to say much. ?Give them a short explanation of the concept and step back. Once they ‘get it,’ they’ll start telling YOU how to use the product. ?This is when it’s time to start taking notes.

One caveat, because these people don’t think or behave like the rest of us, you need to temper their input. ?These people are willing to invest a lot of time and effort into making new products work for them, unlike mainstream buyers. So not everything they say is gold. Most buyers either don’t need or won’t put up with a lot of what these people want, but when you listen carefully, you should be able to understand what to do next.

What’s Next?

You will need more than one early adopter/design partner to really understand the problem you are addressing and how people could use a product to solve it. So, recruit several partners and start to look for common denominators in their feedback. That’s where you’ll find the gold.

As you continue to refine your ideas, keep coming back to the early adopters to show your new developments. They are an important source for ideas and inspiration. ?How to keep them engaged so they don’t lose interest while you are building the product is another challenge that we will cover in a future article.

When executed right, design partners will be eager to buy your product (yes, for money), even before it is ready for market.

And once you succeed with early adopters, you can move on to the mainstream market who will need additional features, for example, to address usability and ease of use. But that’s for a later discussion.

Next, we’ll look at how you find these early adopters/design partners.

In the meantime, if you would like schedule a free 30-minute consultation about how to do it right the first time by working with design partners, click here.