From Product Market Fit to Market Product Fit

or all the success stories and survivor biases of innovation, there are idea graveyards filled with solutions in search of a problem.

A broken mindset that populates these ‘idea’ graves is the notion of product-market fit. It basically says: “Build the product, then let’s find the market.” But in the well-aged, wise words of Smithery: “Make things people want rather than making people want things.” This leads to a much-needed reengineering of innovation paradigms.

Let’s flip product-market fit into market-product fit.

Throwing money at marketing is far less efficient than identifying the needs of a user, a consumer, or a customer who has a Job To Be Done. Great innovation ideas come from creating solutions that remove the friction between users and their desire or need to Get A Job Done. What is a Job To Be Done? Simply put, it is something that needs to be accomplished or achieved.

Where Does Friction Come From?

• Effort: Getting the job done is a pain filled with obstacles, small or big (e.g., think of Zoom and Covid).

• Risk: Getting the job done can come with unexpected repercussions (e.g., price comparison features and customer reviews on shopping platforms).

• Anxiety: Staying in the loop while getting the job done (e.g., push notifications, progress bars, or real-time updates on apps like Uber).

• Inconvenience: Completing the job can require many steps, bureaucracy, or inefficiency (e.g., Amazon and its intuitive customer portals).

The solutions we now use most in our daily lives — the ones we adopt most enthusiastically — are those that remove friction between us and what we need or what delights us.

Seeing the World and Identifying Needs

Innovators often say, “You can’t ask people what they want because they don’t know.” That is not profound; it’s obvious. Insight for innovation, whether incremental or disruptive, comes from the ability to extract understanding from the micro and macro world around us. Steve Jobs didn’t do focus groups, and to his great credit, he was an observant man. His innovative ideas came from absorbing the world around him and connecting the dots.

Gaining insight, finding problems, and then building solutions eliminates much of the heavy lifting associated with marketing and throwing money at sales challenges. Observation is key. Intuitive, creative, and critical thinking are just as essential. That’s how Airbnb was started, as was Uber, along with many other innovations we enjoy today.

Observing the World and Being a Problem Finder at Speed and Scale

New enabling technologies are evolving at unprecedented speed. Yet, we continue to fall into old traps. Automation, data gathering, and analysis at incredible speeds, coupled with generative AI, provide us with the possibility of becoming expert problem finders. But true to our nature, we are “driving into the future by looking in the rearview mirror.” There’s much chatter about synthetic consumer data, but it’s being generated with an outdated mindset: synthetic surveys, synthetic focus groups. These are poor methods for understanding the pulse of the world, now simply scaled with new technology. Scaling bad processes with technology is, well, still bad.

“The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.”

— Bill Gates

Using New Tech to Be a Better Friction and Problem Finder

AI and intelligent automation point to a better way of being good problem finders. Here’s how:

1. Observe and Collect Data: Use advanced systems to gather detailed insights.

2. Identify Patterns of Friction: Leverage AI to analyze and pinpoint barriers.

3. Generate Insights: Automate processes to identify underlying problems with precision.

4. Build Solutions: Use generative AI, enriched by meaningful inputs, to craft innovative products.

Today’s technologies provide creative and effective ways to collect, process, and transform data into valuable outputs that fuel creativity and drive business value.

Mapping Innovation with the Right Questions

There’s no silver bullet when it comes to innovation, even with advanced technology and systems thinking. Talk is cheap — so take the time to step back and discuss goals, methods, and outcomes with your team. Bring the right people into the room to explore the “what” and the “why.”

Ask yourself and your team:

• What data will help us achieve better results?

• What new methods can we use to capture data that truly reflects what’s happening in the world, with people, our customers, and the pain points that stand between them and completing their Jobs To Be Done?

• How can we organize and categorize that data to generate actionable insights?

• How can we use new technologies to speed up and scale the generation of ideas derived from observational insights?

A challenge is only a problem waiting to be solved. That’s true for businesses and customers alike. New enabling technologies embedded in AI and automation hold many answers. But everything starts by asking the right questions.

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