Every business strives to make its product perfect, because it knows that a perfect product can attract no criticism and must surely hit the perfect client at the perfect time. Logically, it would seem that the perfect product would almost sell itself, and make big bucks on the way. This article explores how you can achieve the perfect product and make money in the process.
Rob Wendes Information Technology Consultant 9th January 2009
Business Technology Consulting Bicycles take off
On
17th December 1903 the Wright brothers flew in the face of convention,
when they took out their prototype Flyer to Kitty Hawk and tried it out
for the first time.
Before
they ever got to that point, they distinguished themselves by exploring
the engineering aspects of flight, rather than using trial and error.
Controlled flight had seemed impossible from the work that Lilienthal
had conducted some time earlier, and it took an experiment with a
bicycle to establish where the mathematics had given the wrong steer.
Using
airflow from the motion of their bicycle they balanced the lift from an
aerofoil against a flat plate. These experiments showed why early
gliders didn't make the grade, and by painstaking adjustments they
worked out the optimum aerofoil that gave The Flyer just the right
amount of lift.
Why Wiki came first
When
in 1980's Tim Berners-Lee worked on his Enquire project, little did he
know what might come later. His aim was to develop a data repository
that allowed subscribers to add knowledge and provide links to
references between articles. We might think of this today as more like
a Wiki, but this in turn led to its development now as the World Wide
Web. His initial idea was useful and had a practical application, but
it was only as it was developed that its potential was fully realised.
Stopping along the way
In
both of these examples, what is absolutely clear is that had these
pioneers waited and refined their product, then either a competitor
would have pipped them to the post, or the idea would have been lost
forever.
That
doesn't mean that they lost the potential for revenue, only that the
full potential of the product was only realised after it had hit the
market.
There
are many other examples of just this form of product development. Had
Bill Gates and Paul Allen made the decision that MSDOS was their idea
of perfection, then they wouldn't now rank amongst the richest men in
the world. If Steve Jobs had given up at his first release of the iPod,
then the many products that followed on from it would not have been
there to enhance his revenue stream.
In
searching for perfection, stop along the way and make money while
striving for perfection. Many organisations don't even start a new
product because they strive for all of the answers before the will
commit to it.
75%
If
a project is worth doing at all, then aim for 75%. If you get near to
75% of your aims then that is as much as these pioneers achieved when
they started out. Even if you don't quite make the 75% target, there is
always another release in which the remainder can be sorted. A product
that does 60% of perfection is still a product, and you can chip away
at the 40% as the revenue starts to flow.
And
as for this article? Well it meets about 70% of the goals that I set
out to achieve, and there is always another chance to write a better
one next time!
