How to Validate a New Offering People Don’t Know They Need

Contrary to popular opinion, it is not good science to run experiments by testing minimally viable products to discover customer needs and validate the solution. Why? Because this conflates two experiments and can invalidate both.

In good science, the customer need is validated first, and then experiments can be executed to test the efficacy of the solution alone.

In discussing this with a colleague, she said, “I often think about how stupid I thought the phone camera was when it first came out. It was a problem I didn’t know needed to be solved. Any advice about how to validate those type of innovative ideas and solutions when people don’t even know they have a need for it?”

That’s a great question that has perplexed leaders and innovation teams for too long. There is a simple answer.

The key to success with innovation is to always keep “customer needs” separate and distinct from the product or service solutions companies make to address those needs. The phone camera is just a solution, not a need.

For innovation, customer “needs” are best understood as the jobs people are trying to get done, functionally, emotionally, and socially. People are using their phone cameras to get many different emotional and social jobs done that were not possible until the advent of the Internet and social media, jobs that our old cameras could never do. Consequently, my colleague was naturally thinking only about the jobs she used to get done with her old stand-alone camera because both are called “cameras.” The phone camera does virtually all of those old jobs plus, when combined with social media, it now enables us to do things we could never do before as well, such as:

• Capture a moment with friends more easily and share it
• Record an image/scene more easily
• Document an experience or event live
• Look up information
• Act as a watchdog

But I think the most important jobs that camera phones have enabled us to do are emotional and social. The whole “selfie” movement is being driven by emotional and social jobs people want to get done, such as:

• Project whom I want to be to the world
• Manage my image
• Gain social approval
• Increase self-esteem
• Engage with others
• Feel connected
• Alleviate loneliness

Notice that none of these jobs is new! People have been trying to get them done virtually forever! The jobs we want to get done remain surprisingly stable over time. The solutions we use, however, continue to get better and better. Today, phone cameras and social media help us get these jobs done better than ever before.

So, to come back and answer the question, the way to validate a new-to-the-world idea (solution) is to discover what jobs people can get done better with it. Not only is it possible to discover virtually all the jobs people want to get done in a defined market, but which jobs are important and unsatisfied can be determined with statistical validity as well. Important unsatisfied jobs are opportunities for innovation and growth. The more important and less satisfied a job is, the greater the opportunity forinnovation and growth it presents.

Once the important unsatisfied jobs to be done are identified, companies can either optimize their new solution idea to target the best opportunities (important unsatisfied jobs that they can address especiallywell) or create something entirely new and different to help customers getthose jobs done even better.

Are you wondering how to turn innovation and growth into a repeatable business process that consistently delivers results? Let’s talk.