Business
by Alberto Savoia
Why do most new products flop?
Alberto Savoia, who led engineering teams at Google, says most new products fail in the market even when they're built well. He calls this the Law of Failure. The Right It is his toolkit for finding out whether people want an idea before you spend years building it.
Hear a sample · read by Laura
Savoia sorts failures into three kinds, caused by the launch, by operations or by the premise. The first two can often be put right. When the premise is wrong and people simply don't want the thing, no amount of polish saves it. He calls that the Wrong It.
A prototype tells you whether you can build something and whether it works. A pretotype asks whether people will want it at all, using a quick, cheap fake. Savoia would rather you spent days faking a product than months making one nobody uses.
Then he zooms in to a version you can test straight away, like one office or one street. He calls that hypozooming.
Savoia only trusts evidence that costs people something. An email address, a phone number, an hour of time or a deposit costs more, and tells you more. He wants Your Own Data, gathered from your own tests.
Law of Failure
Most new products fail, even when they are made well.
The wrong thing
The real danger is building something nobody wants, and building it beautifully.
Thoughtland
Ideas and opinions live in what Savoia calls Thoughtland, where nothing has been tested yet.
Pretotyping
Make a cheap fake first, like the wooden block Jeff Hawkins carried around as a pretend Palm Pilot.
Your own data
Trust data you collected yourself over other people's numbers and market reports.
A story from the book
IBM wanted to know whether people would use a computer that typed what they said, long before the technology was ready. So it faked one. Users spoke to a screen while a typist in another room typed their words. Many who liked the idea went off it after trying it.
One thing to try
Take an idea you're keen on and write it as an XYZ hypothesis. Zoom in until you can test it this week. Then make the cheapest pretotype that asks for some skin in the game, like a pre-order form, and count how many people use it.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. The Right It comes with a Name That Idea round and a Spot the Trap case to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appWhy do most new products flop? Alberto Savoia, who led engineering teams at Google, says most new products fail in the market even when they're built well. He calls this the Law of Failure. The Right It is his toolkit for finding out whether people want an idea before you spend years building it.
The Right It; Pretotype before prototype; The XYZ Hypothesis; Skin in the game.
Take an idea you're keen on and write it as an XYZ hypothesis. Zoom in until you can test it this week. Then make the cheapest pretotype that asks for some skin in the game, like a pre-order form, and count how many people use it.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from The Right It in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Name That Idea round and a Spot the Trap case to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
