Identifying right problems
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The document discusses the essence of innovation, emphasizing the importance of problem identification and understanding customer needs to create successful solutions. It illustrates this through the case study of TED's evolution under Chris Anderson, detailing how observing audience passion led to the expansion and reformatting of TED for a broader audience. Key lessons include the necessity of recognizing real problems, ensuring market demand, and the emotional impact of addressing these issues.
Identifying right problems
- 1. Innovation – Lecture I The basics
- 2. What is innovation according to you? • Thinking in a different way. What’s different? • Problem solving, modify the way of living. • Revolutionize the world, solving yet unsolved problem. • Improving the previous solution/alternative solutions. • Using resources in a unique manner. • Combining ideas. • Creating something new. • Going out of the box., practical methods. • Real world problem solving. • Different perspective thinking. • Reduce human efforts.
- 3. Innovation means taking ideas from concepts to thriving reality. Ideas are not features or partial services. Innovation is a journey, not an outcome. The best ideas come in response to an important problem and thrive under constraints.
- 4. Example • How many of you know about TED? • Its history?
- 5. Perspective on Innovation from TED • TED was once a small invitation-only conference limited to the privileged few who could attend in person. • Chris Anderson is the person who expanded the conference’s format and brand, to what we TED in the digital space. • But how did he do it? What was the process? • In 1998, Chris participated in the TED conference, the audience was about 800. • He kind of fell in love with the TED conference, like many people do. • But, Chris was a media person and an entrepreneur who had experience in publishing and content sharing start-ups. • After seeing what he saw, he asked himself several questions.
- 6. Observations made by Chris • The audience was small, but the group was a very influential group of people who were normally very hard for the media companies to get to. • The audience people were obsessed with the event. • Some comments by the people who used to attend the TED conference • “It’s the highlight of my year!” • “This thing has changed my life” • Chris thought, “These kind of statements you normally wouldn’t expect to hear about a conference. This got my attention, the passion from these types of people”. • What did Chris do next? • Through his non-profit Sapling Foundation, he purchased TED in 2002. • And he later thought, “Would people still care the same, if they were not there, but somehow could be exposed to the content?” The answer was nowhere in the sight and for years. • Television was not interested, and there wasn’t way of distributing the content of the talks on a mass scale that made some economic sense.
- 7. • Then came, ONLINE VIDEO. • His team broadcasted these talks. The response? Passionate reaction from the viewers. • “I’m sitting at my computer with tears running down my cheeks watching this person tell their story” • “Watching this talk together prompted the best conversation my fifteen-year-old and I have had in five years”. • The team continued, but the goal was to engage the audience even further.
- 8. Creation of TEDx. • TEDx, is a licensing program that allows third parties to hold TEDx conferences anywhere in the world. • TED with a huge ‘x’ on it indicates that these events were independently organized. • Danger : One might spoil their brand by giving it away. • Advantage : Expand the idea.
- 9. So what are the lessons from this case study? • How do you identify a problem? • What role does observation play? • Is there anything that has caught your attention lately, and you wish to solve it? • Use today’s lecture to reflect on the problem selection for your group. Brainstorm over it with your group. • Should have more than one problem and are not able to arrive at a selection, let us have a chat!
- 10. Identification of Problems, worth solving • Problem identification is key to every successful innovation. Video
- 11. What is the reality? • 43% of all startups fail, as they are offering solutions nobody is willing to pay for. • 95% of all new products are not accepted by consumers. • Companies obviously develop products nobody wants - meaning, they are not addressing a relevant problem in the life of their customers. • Most companies aren’t sufficiently rigorous in defining the problems they’re attempting to solve and articulating why those issues are important. • What is the result of this? • Missed opportunities, Wastage of Resources, and pursue of innovations not aligned with company strategies. • ASK THE RIGHT QUESTIONS, BECOME BETTER AT IT.
- 12. You need to understand customer needs (and their underlying problems) Identifying the right problem is crucial to successful innovation.
- 13. But what do start-ups do? • Test the technical feasibility before validating the marketability of their solution. • This leads to failure.
- 14. What are the problems with this problem statement? It’s a good start, BUT ✓ Who are these people? ✓ How huge is the problem? ✓ What is so convincing about the “app” solution for a systemic problem.
- 15. Example of problems worth solving • Competition between camera manufacturers is quite high. • Not long ago the competitive advantages were gained on a pure functional level: the amount of megapixels, the number of available lenses, the number of focus points and so on. • Sony started a program with professional photographs as brand ambassadors. These ambassadors organize events, where people can learn of their techniques and tricks. • Sony discovered, that the problem worth solving of their clients is not to get the technically best camera, but become better photographers.
- 16. When is a problem worth being solved? • Establish the Need for a Solution. • What is the basic need? • What is the desired outcome? • Who stands to benefit and why? • Justify the need • Contextualize the problem. • Write the Problem Statement.
- 17. The Relevance of the Problem • Where customers have no or only inadequate solutions at their finger tips to solve a problem. • Their level of frustration or suffering is high. • It can be either a widespread problem, concerning many customers, or a niche problem for a small group of customers. • Dig deeper at the symptoms of the problem.
- 18. Talk to your customers • Exploration/Discovery of the Problem • Many innovations arise when there is a problem in one's own life or in the life of others.
- 19. But how to identify problems worth solving? Talk to your customers Observe your customers Detect bad solutions Create a problem, sell a solution
- 20. Starting Point Creator: Marius Ursache
- 21. Link
- 22. Customer Type • Find the 10% of the people for whom the problem is a real pain, not the 90% for whom it’s just a nuisance. • Who are they? • Where do they live? • What is their income? • What does their regular day look like? • Walk in their shoes, so their job, live their life, talk to them over breakfast, lunch, or dinner, observe them.
- 24. Context • When does the problem occur? • Most of the problems are not permanent. • Identify the window of opportunity. Context for the problem in Sao Paulo
- 25. The symptom and the root cause of the problem Identifying the root, not the symptoms, is essential to building the right solution. Keep asking, “why is this a problem” iteratively at each step. Problem : Your car does not start. Problem/Symptom? Symptom Why? The battery is dead. Why? The alternator is not functioning Why? The alternator belt has broken. Why? The alternator belt was well beyond its useful service life and not replaced. Why? The vehicle was not maintained according to the recommended service schedule. (Root Cause)
- 26. Do you still think that building better car batteries is a viable solution in this case?
- 27. Emotional Impact of the Problem • Not enough to understand the problem as a phenomenon or an event. • Considering the emotional impact helps you walk in your customer shoes and understand their behaviour. • Each problem causes an emotional response (joy, sadness, anger, fear, trust, distrust, surprise, anticipation). • In the case of traffic, what are the emotions?? • Frustration and Boredom.
- 28. Alternative Solutions • Always look at what your potential customers are doing to treat their pain or its symptoms. • If what you discovered to be a problem, is really a problem, your customers are likely to be using different tools and actions, to manage their pain. • Read the success of read-it-later tools like Instapaper or Pocket. • Took time to understand how users were reading traditional paper-printed magazines. Explored what people were already doing by using email and group messaging tools and made a simple too that enabled those behaviours in work context.
- 29. • Competition proves that the problem is real. • What if you can’t beat the competition? (Mature markets) • Findings the disadvantages or shortcomings of alternative solutions will help you understand where the core of your solution resides. The Sao Paulo team identified a behaviour of their customers and then found its disadvantage Disadvantage
- 30. The starting point was…. After going through the Problem Cycle we have :
- 32. Conclusion • Working on the right problem is the foundation of successful innovation. • Real talent is identification of right problems, not building the right solutions. • Move systematically when trying to identify the right problem.
- 33. Recommended Reading Why Startups Fail?