“I very quickly saw the benefit of the approach. The coaches explained how this was going to work and gave me deadlines, things to deliver, which I really needed.”
Before A winning idea, no evidence yet.
An award creates momentum, not evidence. Behind the idea sat two big risks: could it be built, and did anyone want it. On the market side the team did not know who the customers were, whether they had a strong need, or what they would commit to. And John had never run an innovation project.
“I still have nightmares of standing on the street corner of London, trying to stop people to see if they want to buy. But it was the true gold.”
The Hypothesis Stack Confront each hypothesis with reality.
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Test feasibility first
John contacted several companies and settled on one developing an e-ink technology to provide a prototype.
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Name the possible customers
He drafted about ten canvases with possible customer profiles and the pain the technology could address, then prioritised them.
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Get out of the building
Street interviews in London with car buyers, about what frustrates them when buying a car, with no leading questions. The answers reframed the segment: people who want the car to match their style of the day.
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Measure real interest
A short advert showing a driver switching her car from blue to red from her phone, broadcast on Nissan's Facebook page, then read for signs of demand.
“You don't go up to a customer and say 'Would you buy this?', because the customer will say yes to please you.”
After A positive failure.
Before
A prize-winning idea.
Two big unknowns, feasibility and demand.
No business background.
After
A prototype partner found.
Street interviews and a video test.
Stopped before the big spend.
Disproving an assumption counts as a result. Stopping an idea on evidence saves the company money, time and effort, and the person who stops it has done the job.
The video drew no strong signal that people wanted the feature. With enough evidence that there was no business case, the project stopped there, before engineering money went in.
“I found an appreciation for failure, positive failure. We didn't have to spend millions to realise that this thing wasn't going to sell.”
Legacy. John called it a positive failure: the company learned what it needed to know without spending millions, and he came out with a method he had never used before.
The full story, with John's own words and the test video: And the car turned red, on Franck's blog.