Hi there -
Here is this week’s “1 principle, 2 strategies, and 3 actionable tactics” for running lean…
1 Universal Principle
“Existing Alternatives: The most important Lean Canvas building block.”
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I used to think the Problem box was the most important building block on the Lean Canvas. But, while starting with problems is simple, identifying good problems is challenging.
A good problem is one that customers
- are aware of,
- care about, and
- will pay money to solve.
Most founders ask: What problem does my solution solve? But this is prone to the Innovator’s bias:
Everything looks like a nail if you’ve already decided to build a hammer.
It’s very hard to unsee our solutions, which is why it’s more effective to start mining for problems on a different box, “Existing Alternatives.”
And ask a different question: What’s broken with the existing alternatives?
And therein lies the key to unlocking good problems worth solving.
Creating something new and innovative is about creating something better and different.
2 Underlying Strategies at Play
I. Better is relative.
Customers compare anything new against what they know. If you want to cause them to switch to your product, get to know what they know and how they’ll compare your product to the existing alternatives.
Understand their axes of better.
II. Being different requires picking different axes of better.
But getting chosen over the existing alternatives requires your product to either be significantly better (3x-10x) or different.
Different is easier than better.
Understand how customers will compare your product to the existing alternatives but then change the game by picking two different axes of better you can be best at.
This is how you craft the “uniqueness” in your unique value proposition.
Starting with existing alternatives has its pitfalls. If you pick the wrong existing alternative, your difference will not matter.
3 Actionable Tactics
I. Start with the bigger context.
Existing alternatives are context-specific.
The best way to surface context is by asking: “What’s your product for?”
People don’t want a quarter-inch drill bit or a quarter-inch hole; they want [bigger context goes here].
Some examples:
- to hang a painting,
- to assemble a piece of furniture,
- to construct a house.
Yes, you must narrow your scope to a specific use case or job.
II. Identify the most popular existing alternatives.
Within this narrower scope, what do customers currently use? Don’t limit yourself to products that look like yours. Most existing alternatives will look nothing like your product.
We hung paintings by drilling a hole in the wall to secure a hook until the 3M command strip came along:
III. What’s broken with these existing alternatives?
That’s the million or billion-dollar question.
Innovation is fundamentally about causing a switch from popular existing alternatives to your new way. And the way to cause a switch is to highlight something big enough that's broken with the old way you fix.
That’s all for today. See you next week.
Ash
Author of Running Lean and creator of Lean Canvas
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P.S.
For more examples of transcending existing alternative categories, see: