Nov 04 2013
To Create a Successful Product, Don’t Start With a Blank Piece of Paper, Start With a Customer Need
You know you’re a business student when you giggle out loud reading a Forbes article. This particular entry by Paul Brown caught my eye – he argues against the notion of creative new products. He is not discouraging outlandish and impractical ventures, but is blatantly disapproving unique entrepreneurship.
Paul argues that creativity, though a valued trait, is not profitable. In that sense, an ‘innovative’ product will likely not be successful if it aims to create a new market. Entrepreneurs should first analyze the primary needs of a given target market and shape a product around these needs. From my marketing course, I know that this eliminates one of the largest problems of aspiring entrepreneurs – finding a market who will want to buy their product. By aiming to fulfill a need rather than creating an entirely new product, we already have an identifiable, reachable, and feasible target market, as well as a product that we know has a high probability of achieving profitability. The marketing strategy, process becomes dramatically easier.