Some people just don’t get it.
You have a new idea of a product using the latest technology. You think that you can make it work using the smart new logic you invented, and you dream that you will make a lot of fame and money from the product.
Everything is fine with the assumption except that it will remain a dream. It will never ever work. For any real thing to work in the world, it should have a good business logic behind it. It is not sufficient to have a great technology behind your idea. It is all about business.
Joel Spolsky writes in Architecture astronauts take over about this:
It sort of bothers me, intellectually, that there are these people running around acting like they’re building the next great thing who keep serving us the same exact TV dinner that I didn’t want on Sunday night, and I didn’t want it when you tried to serve it again Monday night, and you crunched it up and mixed in some cheese and I didn’t eat that Tuesday night, and here it is Wednesday and you’ve rebuilt the whole goddamn TV dinner industry from the ground up and you’re giving me 1955 salisbury steak that I just DON’T WANT. What is it going to take for you to get the message that customers don’t want the things that architecture astronauts just love to build. The people? They love twitter. And flickr and delicious and picasa and tripit and ebay and a million other fun things, which they do want, and this so called synchronization problem is just not an actual problem, it’s a fun programming exercise that you’re doing because it’s just hard enough to be interesting but not so hard that you can’t figure it out.
The thing is that it is always about business.
It is not about how cute your idea is. It is not about the overload of latest Martian technology you use in your product. People never care about your technology. They don’t care about your idea or your dreams. They want a reasonable return for using your product. Your product must help them do their job better. If not, your product will fail. Watch out for the disaster.
The simple question is will people want to use it. I repeat, it is not about will people use it. It is about will people want to use it.
Will your product compel people to use it for the second time?
Think about it the next time you are planning your ground-breaking product.
You are so correct.
I have another related point, (not an argument against your hypothesis). Lot of times, you can not fully evaluate the business need of a new product. If you are designing a new product for a latent need (i.e. an unarticulated need in the society), it is tough to know whether your design is going to become hit or dud. In those situations, I believe, one has to go with his/her instinct.
Narayana,
Thanks for that valuable point.
it means that successful technology do not always sure successful product???
can you please tell what other factors are also needed to make product successful