Three Challenges Products Must Address

One day while watching Shark Tank USA, I came face-to-face with a terrible blindspot. They were showing products that sell by three millions on TV infomercials. My engineering eyes did not see technical breakthroughs in them. Yet those were hugely successful products. That's when it hit me.

Innovation is not just about technological breakthroughs.

In one of the courses on innovation I learned about this trifecta that leads to innovative products. You can call it the the product challenges or give it any other name.

Innovation is realised at the intersection of people, technical, and business challenges.

People

The people challenge addresses the number of people who are interested in adopting your product. They must face a pain point. Existing solutions must be clunky or expensive or inefficient. When something new is introduced, this customer base will try your product out. There's much more to this but in short, you're trying to estimate your market.

Think of products that seemed so far out but that is mainstream for us today: online entertainment, ebooks, recliner seats at movies, and Indo-Chinese food.

Technical

Technical challenge addresses the advancements or product's functional improvement over what exists today. Can you make it work better? How much is it more efficient?

Pick any product and evaluate how much it works better considering it's prior versions. One easy pick for me is how my phone has replaced the digital cameras we used to carry on vacations.

Business

The third challenge is the business or financial hurdle. The product must be able to sell for what it costs to make. That's when you can make more, scale, and make it a thriving business.

Many technological advancements fail in this challenge. Funding or early adopters can help in this regard but only to some extent.

Please analyse products around you across these challenges. Tell me which ones win and which don't.

That's it for today.

Happy Ideating!

Hemang.