We have all fallen in love with an idea sometime or another in our careers.

So what do we end up doing?

We rush to build it.

Convinced that the idea is better than sliced bread, we fight to secure budget and resources.  Spend months (if not years) building it, making it perfect, adding in all the “right” features.  

And eventually launching it.

Unfortunately, we know how this story ends.

Reality kicks in.

We find out that the idea did not have any legs. Either because the customers don’t like / need it, they can’t use it properly, we cant build it the way it should be built, and / or it just never made money.  

But that is not the worse of it.

Yes it sucks that the idea failed. But that is not what hurts. 

What hurts comes down to three things,

1. We failed big and slow:  It took us months / years and a ton of money to fail.  It’s like flushing money down the toilet.
2. High opportunity cost:  Imagine what else we could have done with the cash and time instead.
3. Public humiliation:  Especially if the idea had high visibility (internally and externally). Or we work in an organization that does not celebrate failure.

So what do we do the next time? Take less risk.

To save ourselves from the above agony, we start to back less risky ideas. We innovate less.   

Instead of trying something new.  We stick with the old tried and true. 

Why make things 10X better, when we can tweak around the edges and have a higher success rate. Why invest in new things, when we can cut cost.

After all, it is much easier and more predictable.   

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The problem with this mindset is that it compounds over time.

The “less risky” strategy may work for some time.

But it forces you down a path that rewards taking less and less risk over time. Till you come to a point, where you simply stop innovating all together.

And then one day, you wake up and you find yourselves in a Netflix vs. HBO moment.  Where you are decades behind the competition and there is no hope to catch up.  

To avoid this fate, do what the best product organizations do with their ideas – they experiment first and then build.

Google, Amazon, Facebook, and countless other startups never rush to build when they have an idea.  

Instead, if they think the idea is worth pursuing, they run short experiments to see if,

1. Customers want it and will use it
2. They can built it within the time and budget, and
3. The idea will deliver the expected business impact (outcome)

And only after they get confirmation along the above three dimensions.  They spend money, time, and resources to build it.

There are four key benefits to moving to this “experiment first” mindset.

1. Innovate More: Try out lots of new and risky ideas without breaking the bank (both in terms of depth and breath of ideas)
2. Innovate Quickly: Learn what will work / not work in weeks as opposed to months and years, and
3. Take On Less Risk: No need to bet the farm, run small and quick data driven experiments, and ultimately
4. Build Great Products: That you know your customers will love and will have the impact that you desire. 

As for how to experiment – it is fairly straightforward.

There is no “right” way to run experiments.  

However, the process that has worked for many of our clients includes, 

1. Identify the riskiest assumption:  What are the top 3 – 5 assumptions that need to be true in order for the product to be successful?
2. Develop experiments:  Create tests to validate these assumptions, without actually building the product.  The goal here is to do this as quickly and cheaply as possible.  Experiments can range from showing prototypes, A/B testing, administering surveys, to utilizing fake door tests.
3. Run experiments:  Make sure that the product managers are directly involved in running the experiments.  There is absolutely no substitute for learning directly from the customers.  This activity cannot be outsourced.  
4. Analyze the feedback and decide:  Collect the necessary data and then use that data (and only that data) to build, pivot, or kill the idea.  

For more details check out these excellent articles Five cheap & effective prototyping techniques, how digital leaders build great products (step 2), Gmail case study, AT&T case study, and Quibi case study.   

So what does all this mean for you? How can you innovate more?

The next time you think of an idea.  Don’t rush to build right away.

Take a few weeks to experiment first to validate the idea.  And then build.

Yes, I know, it will take some time up front. But trust me, it is well worth it.

The better you get at experimenting, the more innovative you will be. 

Happy building!!