Test It!

You can’t contemplate your way to greatness.

All the thinking, strategising and imagination in the world will amount to nothing unless at some point you take your offer to market. Ideas evolve tremendously when they are actually applied.

This principle is recognised by celebrated economist Richard Thaler who provides, amongst a broad ranging body of work, groundbreaking analysis of the effect unpredictable human behaviour has on rigid economic modelling. The same principle can be taken from Thaler’s co-author Cass Sunstein (Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs) who recently remarked that his aim was to create regulatory policy which catered for unpredictable humans rather than simple economic units. “homo sapiens rather than homo economicus,”

You simply cannot understand or fully plan for the response of a market.

Consider this story; In the mid-1990s, a group of chemists in Kent who were working for Pfizer developed a drug that they hoped would treat high blood pressure and heart disease. In an attempt to gain a better idea of the effectiveness of their drug, they did as all pharmaceutical companies do and ran drug trials. Despite all the promise that sildenafil – the compound – represented, it did not take long to prove that the scientists’ offer was wrong. It had little or no positive effect on blood pressure or heart disease.

However, by taking the idea to market, something else became obvious. This compound would not fix your blood pressure but it would give men a pretty damn good erection. Being the smart scientists they were, they thought perhaps there was something in this and decided to patent the drug and release it to men the world over. The little blue pill they produced is called Viagra – perhaps you’ve heard of it.

The real key here is to allow yourself to make mistakes and to be okay with parts of your commercial proposition being proven wrong. Get your idea out of your head and start trying it out for real. You will be amazed how much clearer things will become with some immediate feedback.