Letting it Sink In

"You just don’t get it,” the man shouted. “You don’t understand what I’m talking about.” And he was right, still is right! I don’t understand what he is driving at.

Oh, I know he wants to start a business with his favorite ‘widgets’ but I keep telling him there is no market for his particular item. He claims otherwise, so the chase is on to discover what he ‘knows’ and I don’t. I’m not sure the two are in agreement anyway!

Knowing a new product is a neat idea is one thing; knowing that a market exists for it is pure supposition. It is a guess that someone else likes it as much as you do and so it should be made, marketed and sold to those eager buyers. Trouble is those buyers are more in the mind of the widget inventor than in reality.

Besides, another consideration in this prospective is the timeliness of the market place. Is it ready for this product at this time? Or has this product come to market too late? Or too early? And if either or both are true, what does this tell us about other, similar products? Are they doomed as well, or is there a terrific opportunity buried in this data?

Well, that is the exercise the mind must tackle. Data and lots of it has to be gathered and studied to determine if the entrepreneur has a workable idea. Often they don’t; sometimes they do. The trick is to discipline the thinking and take the time to do the homework. A product may be a dandy idea but if it is limited to a small market of need, then the profitability of producing and distributing the product is too little or less than zero.

We want to limit the losses and disappointments. Better to think things through before investing money into something that is apt to be a loser.

Return now to the original sentence of this post: whether I get it or not is still an open question. Studying the product and understanding its appeal is what the entrepreneur wants me to do. He needs me to do this. So I have to study it more. In detail. In depth.

I have to let it sink in to a broader and deeper consciousness. Maybe this product is unique and very valuable. Maybe this product will revolutionize the marketplace, even grow a new industry around it. Steve Jobs proposed this and look what happened? So did Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates.

Just because their products became enormously complex didn’t stop them from pursuing a dream that led to an amazing new global economy. Singly they revolutionized their part of an industry. It became a new industry because of their innovation. Together, all three of these entrepreneurs revolutionized the lives of billions of people.

Now, let that sink in!

Of course, the widget maker may still have an underappreciated product that will go nowhere. Right now I still think that is true. But I should give him the benefit of the doubt and dig deeper.

Who knows what I will find?

June 26, 2017