Thinking Outside The Box: Exploring Unconventional Solutions

It's been interesting to watch this recently as I've interacted with others and understood the depth of technical solutions provided at various price points.

An interesting concern stood out when some solutions lacked the depth of expertise and left the solution feeling hollow and boring. The software likely shouldn't exist, especially at the noted price point with other more competitive offers in the marketplace.

Pointing fingers and blaming others though is not meant to be the point of this piece as much as it is to discuss the technical ramifications and psychological impacts of how you design, package, and sell a solution to a client.

Through this, we'll also begin to understand the need for extra daring and how that impacts the solution from initial design through delivery into the marketplace.

Out-of-the-box solutions: The need and why to operate this way

From an initial product design, out-of-the-box truly isn't about re-inventing the same wheel ad infinitum as much as it is about capturing and holding people's attention and intrigue.

From a technical perspective, this would look like using a novel technique on a novel problem that attracts people and makes them say: "I want to work for this person."

Discussing with clients, this often comes in the form of a feature list other software doesn't have or doesn't implement as well, which still makes a significant difference in the end-user experience, if done correctly, the technology should fit like a glove, and provide an extremely smooth experience.

Tradeoffs always exist from a technical perspective, but often just the right insight from a technical and business perspective can allow us to achieve a higher userbase and subsidize the price of lower-level users against higher-paying users, though of course, you focus on the needs of higher-paying users over the lower-paying users accordingly.

For me, I've noticed when the experience is done just so and the price is reasonable, I will pay hand over fist for the right solution because I know the value produced will far exceed what I ever pay for it.

Moving from drudgery into innovation

Some solutions I've seen recently don't or haven't made great use of AI technology and somehow think they'll remain competitive in the market as things continue to grow.

In this case, the solution still feels particularly proceduralized and doesn't offer the next level of spice that would make for a great customer experience.

Say I'm working on a blood sugar monitoring app and I want to be more proactive about alerting the user as things are getting bad and scheduling with the doctor if things get particularly bad and reorganizing schedules as necessary to ensure the emergency can be addressed on both people's schedules.

The lowest quality solution is to just do the prediction and give the user a warning if blood sugar gets high.

A better quality solution would provide the user with a warning and give them actions they could take to lower their blood sugar on their own accord and provide reminders as necessary to ensure goals are met.

The best solution as implied is not only calling the patient when things get into the danger zone but also giving the patient and doctor ways to quickly access each other through schedule optimization and ancillary transport to see each other wherever quickly, whether telehealth or in-person.

In other words, I've maximized the convenience of the application I'm working on and ensured people knew up front were getting into to maximize convenience for all involved.

How does this change the packaging and delivery of the service?

The first thing this allows me to do is to create multiple tiers of packaging more likely centered around fair downgrades from the best solution than trying to include any packaging from the lowest and better quality solutions.

While it may be more expensive, it opens up more sales channels than if I had left it as I had before and gives me a chance to do interesting partnerships for service delivery.

For example, I might not want to offer transport in only an emergency but offer a tier of options through local taxis, Uber drivers, and ambulance services offering a market that local taxis and Uber drivers may not necessarily get access to.

In other words, you've created a set of opportunities for others to benefit which allow you to benefit as well.

There should also be partnerships with calendar scheduling and optimization services making the entire process seamless on the front end for users.

GTM with this solution

Based on how we've repackaged and included extra thoughts into the idea, we'll be able to generate intrigue that should allow us to build user interest at scale.

It's likely something like this already exists, but we get an obvious insight into how we grab our prospect's attention and get them to be a committed long-term user.

Ensuring everyone wins also ensures you have staying power in the market and makes people want to work with you more as you progress in your career.

Back through the basics into the advanced

Through this article, we've seen the basics of how a novel twist on an idea generates intrigue and makes you more competitive in the market over the less competitive drudgery that can plague company and founder pocketbooks.

Technologically, the advancement typically requires that new techniques be introduced to solve the problem, but yield a huge competitive advantage as we go to market.

Then, ensuring everyone wins gives us the extra staying power and keeps us above water long enough to find the next advancement clients need for success.