For a lot of wild ideas and projects in the digital space, getting the ball rolling seems to be the hardest part. Luckily, the first step is easy. Organizational bottlenecks aside, many people still approach building digital products from their own perspective. People tend to list features and requirements for a website or application based on what THEY think YOU want.

But the fatal, unspoken flaw of this approach is that assumptions are being treated as facts, when nothing actually gets tested early on. At one point, Oral-B thought it was a good idea if their electric toothbrushes could play music. Yeah...

But the consequence is that companies have no qualms with letting months or even years go by before an actual customer gets to use the product. Because they feel like they had "the right idea" all along. So how do you deal with this?

Unfortunately, you can't teach people to be clairvoyant, but...

👌 You can teach people to think in assumptions, rather than features.

👌 You can teach people to treat digital innovation projects as experiments.

That's the first step. Dislodging yourself your own convictions and taking a more practical approach: trying something new and actually checking if people like it.

Do that over and over and you'll end up with something people will definitely love using.

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