The world is rampant with “amazing” mousetraps. Products that are far superior to those on the market, services that really catch the “need” of the customer. The human imagination never ceases, and is multiplied and evolved through each generation.
The question is….will they come? Will those products and/or services win the war of the marketplace? All too often, the answer is NO.
Propelled by a certain product/service in which I’ve been involved for a while, I wondered to myself, why is it that despite the product being far “superior”, few people have adopted it.
The answer perhaps lies in the question. Firstly, how does one define “superior”? Secondly, why did anyone assume that in the most competitive, fierce and quick to change marketplace that we have ever known, would anyone assume that simply building it is enough?
Let me address my thoughts on the first point. Defining Superior.
What is a better product? One that drives consumers to want more. Notice the lack of the word “need”. People are usually quite aware of the needs. Its product or service providers that tap into the “want”, that will get the premium and usually win the war. Because of the fact that “superior” is all too often defined by a faster, stronger widget, and not defined in the customer’s terms. We only have to look at Apple to understand that while there is no question that a strong amount of IP and smarts goes into designing each product, you will note that a lot of that effort is to target the “wants” of the customers, not the needs. I don’t really need the product to look good, but I want it to because it affects my sense of self and what I perceive to be other’s view of me…or so the story goes.
Second point. The assumption that people will come.
Even Apple or Zynga, with their amazing products, spend crazy amounts on marketing. Why? Because then all they need are order takers. Apple actually has the biggest salesperson in Steve Jobs, and so it will be interesting to see how he is replaced. Yet they spend amounts beyond imagination on creating the marketing campaigns, websites, packaging, look and feel of their products, all to address our “wants”. We want to be cool, we want to have the latest, we want to be part of a crowd, we want to be admired, we want, we want, we want.
So if you’ve built a better mousetrap and people are not coming, look beyond the obvious. Did they want a 10mhz chip vs the 5 mhz of your competition. If that is your only distinction then be prepared to be displaced by the guy who comes along with the 11mhz model sometime very soon.
An example of this in the solar industry is the recently bankrupted Solyndra, who was going to build a better mousetrap. Innovative technology with an eventually lower cost…until the marketplace changed. They had a pipeline, yet they underestimated the degree to which immediate needs (cost) were far more important than wants (cool design) in a commodity market. If this seems like a contradiction to what I have written above, it is. Because not every market has the same balance of needs and wants, and the degree to which you understand that about the various verticals you address, will mean the difference between long term success or failure.
Sass