If you are in a you company or you have started work on a new product involving some technology you should be asking yourself this question every single day until you come up with an answer. There are of course numerous ways of actually succeeding and you may think that brilliant ideas and hard work is all it takes?
According to world renown analyst and writer Pip Coburn, of Coburn Ventures, you have about a 4% chance of making that breakthrough product or succeeding with your new technology! This might bum some people out, but have no fear Mr Coburn has some insight as to why this is the case and how you can get out of it.
In his book, The Change Function, he outlines something called (surprise, surprise): The Change Function.
The Change Function = f(The Perceived Pain of Adaption, User crisis)
That’s the formula, now go home and make it happen! You didn’t quite get it? Well, Coburn thinks that whether your product/technology is user friendly in the eyes of people building it is irrelevant as long as it is perceived to be hard by users. TPPA or The Perceived Pain of Adoption is what Mr Coburn calls this.
Second part of the function is user crisis, does the user actually feel a real need for your product/technology?
In his book Mr Coburn outlines technologies/products which failed and why that is. Obviously it is because the two parameters in the change function are not what they should be. I really loved his book and I got a lot of insight into how you can evaluate the chances of success for a product/technology.
Mr Coburn’s style of writing is upbeat and funny. In addition he has numerous quotes in his book from people like Ghandi to Einstein to Bill Gates. If you have not read this book, you should.
August 21st, 2007 | Books, work | No comments