A Bad Solution Is Not Automatically a Good Startup Problem
I have noticed that researchers sometimes describe a problem by describing what is wrong with the existing solution.
“It is too expensive.”
“It takes too long.”
“It is not accurate enough.”
“It requires too much manual effort.”
“There is no good technology available for this.”
All of these may be completely true. But there is a leap that can happen next:
The existing solution is inadequate, therefore there is a problem worth solving.
I’m not sure it follows.
A solution can be expensive without the customer caring enough about the cost to change.
It can be slow without the delay being important enough to solve. It can require manual effort without that effort being particularly painful. And sometimes, there simply is not a solution because the customer doesn’t care enough about the problem to demand one.
I was reminded of this again last week while working with STEM faculty and researchers taking their research towards commercialisation. We are naturally drawn to the gap in the technology. But the customer may not experience that gap as a problem. That distinction matters.
Because a bad solution is not automatically a good problem.
Before asking:
“How can we build something better?”
perhaps we should first ask:
“Who actually cares that the current way is not good enough, and why?”
