On of the products we own has the potential to be a big success in terms of revenue. Or so we’d like to think. In the real world however we are not able to monetize it. What should we do now?
The first step might’ve been the hardest. We needed to accept that currently we fail.
Next thing we do is to form a task force. A think tank. Someone representing the product, someone for the business side, someone for the architecture and a moderator with some methodology knowhow for the thinking process. All of course are multi-talented but these are the main responsibilities.
We also agreed on starting with a clear plate. Instead of developing the existing product any further we need to think from scratch to allow the result to be something else entirely if necessary.
Then we need time.
We organize to have a first all-day meeting somewhere isolated. Beforehand everybody is asked to prepare a list of ideas, challenges, opportunities and so on. It is important to do this before the meeting as for the lists to be complete you will need several days otherwise you will forget some points.
We’ve got this far. The meeting is yet to come where we will share our lists of things and try to develop a big idea that we believe in. If that happens we will arrange more meetings with outsiders such as potential clients to test our ideas out in the open.
The other hard conclusion we face: we might still fail. It has to be an option to conclude that our idea will not work and we need to shut down and focus on something else. Even if that is the case the time invested will be worth it as we will no longer ask ourselves:
What if..?
