One idea is not enough.
Dmitrii Kanin
R&D Engineer 17+ years experience (CAD/3D graphics/CV/Simulation/Web/Mobile/AR/SaaS/Hardware)
Reflections about innovative tech startups. What are the stages of the life cycle of any invention?
The content of the article
Companies versus individuals - who has the advantage?
Some may think that the era of great lone inventors of the level of Leonardo da Vinci, Ivan Kulibin, Nikola Tesla is over. There is an opinion that only large companies can develop and bring to market large-scale innovations. It is they who decide what will be in great demand tomorrow, and therefore, bring great profits.
This is not entirely true. Yes, we are all used to how large companies release their innovative products. But they are all just the result of a process of constant improvement: bigger screen, more cameras, faster processor. These innovations occur with a certain periodicity, and no longer produce any revolutionary changes.
Whether it's small innovative enterprises or individual developers who monetize their unique ideas. It is their innovations that are real examples of revolutionary inventions that change the way of life of millions of people. It should be noted that corporations themselves were once small companies, and in their initial journey they were supported by only 2.5% of innovators who were ready to take risks and love to try everything new. And now they are under pressure from the opinion of 68% of the conservative majority, which are skeptical about everything and deny everything that is doubtful.
Therefore, on the one hand, this is an advantage for large companies, and on the other hand, it enables unknown developers to achieve great success by introducing new products to the market. This pattern is known as innovation diffusion.
Diffusion of innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what speed new ideas and technologies spread across cultures. This theory was popularized by the American sociologist Everett Rogers in 1962, thanks to his book Diffusion of Innovations. Rogers defines "diffusion" as the process by which an innovation (such as new ideas, processes, or products) is transmitted over time through certain channels among the members of social systems.
Corporations, understanding this pattern, are working to maintain their positions. They come up with new technologies, patent them, but are in no hurry to bring them to the market. A new product is brought to market only after consumers have lost interest in the current version and are ready to embrace the new one. It usually takes from 3 to 5 years from the moment of registration of a patent application to the release of a product.
That is how much time innovators have to release their product faster than corporations and at the same time not fall under their patent, but it is best to get your own patent. You need to understand that the same people work in corporations, they just have more resources, but the business processes in them are more bureaucratic, which means that the advantage of a startup is in speed of decision-making and flexibility.
Next, I will try to give advice on how to invent something unique, and if you're lucky, then get rich. I myself have not yet become rich, but I have invented something. I hope that my many years of experience, consisting of failures and insights, will help future innovators.
It doesn't matter if you are a large company or a lone innovator, your product must go through all stages of its life cycle: from idea, prototype, MVP to commercial product. And your success is determined by how quickly you can test hypotheses, and therefore move through the stages of the life cycle.
Starting idea
Generating an idea is often the easiest thing to do. Therefore, there is a well-known phrase "an idea costs nothing". Ideas are born differently for everyone: from a personal need, after an extensive analysis of the subject area and global trends, or even in a dream. For example, the idea of my first startup arose at the intersection of my two interests: CAD and Internet technologies. At that time, there were only desktop CAD systems, but there were no CAD systems that did not require installation on a PC and worked directly in the browser. It's a pity the startup died, but we managed to develop the Prototype. The idea may not even come from you. In any case, ideas must be treated critically. There is a tip on how to test an idea - find and analyze competitors:
If you have no ideas at all, I advise you to visit more specialized exhibitions, forums, conferences. Read more about the stories of successful companies, they always tell how the idea arose. There are various methods of activating thinking. The most famous of these is the brainstorming method. We are moving smoothly to the second stage.
Proof of?concept
The starting idea is the first hypothesis you need to test. You must confirm or deny that there is a problem that people or companies are willing to pay to solve, and that your solution effectively solves that problem.
At this stage, you can not be afraid that the idea will be stolen, because you can not discuss the decision itself. Your job is to identify your target customer segment, find the right people for that segment, and talk to them.
The more questions you ask, and the more people you interview, the more complete picture of the problem, and how it is being solved now, you will have.
Those who immediately begin to develop an idea without discussing it with anyone, and without analyzing the prior art, do not act wisely. After all, in this way you risk reinventing the wheel. Only in constant contact with your customers can a truly valuable product be developed.
If the existence of a problem and the value of your solution are confirmed, then it's time to start developing a product.
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Prototype
According to the Lean Startup methodology, it is necessary to develop and bring new products and services to the market in short iterations. A prototype can be called the result of one iteration. A prototype is a working model, prototype of a product or part of a product. It allows you to see clear advantages and disadvantages. When developing prototypes, it is very important to measure progress, maintain version control - there will be many versions to be able to evaluate their value and revert to earlier versions if a dead-end branch is reached in development.
Using this approach, companies can design products and services that meet customer expectations and needs without the need for large initial funding or costly product launches.
Perhaps this stage is the most difficult and most interesting. You have an idea, a confirmed demand, and a technical task formed from the answers of clients and experts, but you have complete uncertainty about what to do next. You can, of course, use the old-fashioned way of trial and error, and test technical hypotheses one by one, but this will take years, and so you definitely will not overtake your competitors.
In conditions of uncertainty, TRIZ (the theory of inventive problem solving) comes to your aid, consisting of techniques and methods for solving technical problems. At one time, its creator analyzed a huge layer of patents and identified general patterns in the development of technical systems. Guided by TRIZ, the prototype development process is significantly accelerated and gains direction.
So, you already have several prototypes, and you began to check their consistency.
To determine the feasibility of further development of a potential invention, a patent search for novelty is required, i.e. search in the prior art for similar technical solutions. An analysis of the solutions found will make it possible to conclude whether the potential invention is new and whether this potential invention has an inventive step. I advise you to conduct a patent search in parallel with the definition of the patent landscape. As a result of this research, you will get an idea about the general state of your technology direction, as well as the activity of competitors and their areas of interest.
After you've done a patent search, tested several prototypes, you pick the one most viable prototype and move on to the next stage.
MVP
Whatever the product, before you start testing it with potential buyers, you need to develop an MVP (minimum viable product version). MVP is not a prototype. The prototype cannot be sold, but the MVP can. The prototype is only used internally, and the MVP is your first product that the market sees. Therefore, higher requirements are imposed on MVP in terms of accuracy, reliability, and convenience. And if you have competitors, then the MVP should have advantages over them: solve problems faster, be able to do what others cannot.
By this time, you should already have the first real customer who will buy a product or order a service from you. A pilot project is always a "leap of faith" on the part of the first client, because you don't have successful cases yet, you don't have a name, and successful companies rarely take risks. There is no need to make a pilot right away with top companies.
Start small, with a small regional company. Task: test the technology and get a real positive case, which you can refer to in negotiations with larger companies at the federal or international level.
Сommercial product
If you did a good job in the previous stages, then you started to make a profit, and commercial exploitation began. At this stage, it is important to establish a process for continuous improvement of the product or service in the company.
It is important not to lose competitive advantage, and for this you need to continue R&D and keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. It is important not to lose customers and users, for which it is necessary to organize a technical support service and implement a problem and incident management process. Be prepared for problems to come. You need to understand that it is from your users and customers that the most important information for development comes. And that negative feedback is not a criticism of your achievements, but a reason to become even better.
Learn from your mistakes, from the mistakes of others, learn and implement best practices. Introduce standards, take care of the quality of your product or service.
Diffusion and Implementation
When a product or service is completely ready, all processes in the company run like clockwork, which means that you are ready to scale. It's time to move from small-scale production to serial or even mass production, you need to run advertising and work to increase the user or customer base. At this stage, there are some problems: it is necessary to optimize the design, technology, business processes.
Rapid growth will also require large resources. If you have reached this stage, then you have become very interesting to investors. This means that you can invest money in you, and get even more money at the exit.
Conclusion
Modern technology business can serve as an example of the struggle for existence. So some startups die without learning how to profit from their ideas, other startups are bought by large companies, absorbed or strangled by the state, and only the most daring, ambitious and capable succeed.
The life of a startup cannot be called peaceful, because it is life during technological wars. Every startup must be ready for competitive intelligence and espionage. It's good that all this is regulated by patent law, before which a startup and a large company have the same rights and obligations.
And the last tip - do not forget to register the rights to your intellectual property. And then maybe, if everything goes well for you, then your name will be among the great inventors and entrepreneurs on a par with Henry Ford, Steve Jobs and others.