The Right It

by Alberto Savoia

  It’s unlikely that you’ll ever find yourself in a success-disaster situation of the same magnitude as Elon Musk’s, but I guarantee you that you will have to deal with a wide range of problems, complications, and mini-disasters of your own. And unless you really care about that idea of yours, you will not have the motivation necessary to handle those obstacles and see it to fruition. In other words, in order to ultimately succeed with an idea, it’s not enough to know that the idea is The Right It for the market; it has to be The Right It for you. It has to be a two-way match.

  How can you know ahead of time if an idea is right for you? Once again, I can give you no guarantees. But leaving Thoughtland and going through the pretotyping process will teach you not only about the market’s actual response to the idea, but also about your response to working with the idea. And that’s another great reason to do pretotyping. Let me explain.

  Being clear about your hypotheses, putting them to the test, and analyzing the results objectively is the most effective and efficient way to validate your idea against the market. It requires commitment and quite a bit of work, but it should also be fun, exciting, and engaging. If you are not experiencing at least some fun and excitement working with your idea at this early stage (e.g., devising, creating, and running pretotyping experiments), either you are doing it wrong or the idea and market you are testing are probably not a good match for you. And that’s something that you should not overlook, because it’s a strong indicator that the idea you are working on may not be The Right It for you.

  If you are not enjoying the pretotyping process, at some point you have to ask yourself some tough questions:

  Even if this idea that I hatched in Thoughtland turns out to be The Right It, is it likely to be my thing?

  Am I cut out for this kind of job, this kind of product (or service or business)?

  Do I really want to be in this market for the next few years?

  If you cannot answer these questions affirmatively, you should reconsider pursuing the idea—even if that means abandoning an idea that is likely to succeed in the market. You don’t want to be stuck working on something you don’t care about. Sooner or later (and probably sooner rather than later) you will get fed up with it and stop giving it your best—you’ll stop building It right. And that’s not fair to your idea, your investors, your customers, or yourself.

  Many people, including myself, dream of starting a restaurant. My wife and I talk about it all the time. In Thoughtland owning a restaurant sounds great: you get to have fun designing the dining room, creating the menu, hobnobbing with the customers, and making lots of money along the way. The reality, as every restaurateur knows, is very different—more grungy than glamorous. Even if your restaurant concept is The Right It, you will be spending more time on marketing, personnel issues, supplier problems, accounting, and so forth, than coming up with the perfect steak tartare (yum!).

  As you pretotype your idea, you will learn not only if the idea is The Right It, but if you are the Right Person (or Team) to execute the idea. And that’s just as important. Let me share with you a typical example.

  Two years ago, I received an email from a young entrepreneur; let’s call him Darrell. Darrell had an idea for an innovative and eco-friendly diaper-delivery and -disposal service. He had read my preto-book Pretotype It and thought that two of the pretotyping techniques I described were perfectly suited for testing his idea. To make sure he was on the right track, he contacted me to explain his concept and to get some feedback on his plans for pretotyping it. I suggested a couple of minor tweaks to make his tests more objective, wished him good luck, and asked him to keep me posted. And since my children are now in their twenties, that’s the last I thought about diapers for a while.

  A few months later, Google asked me to teach a seminar on pretotyping to the diapers division of a major consumer-goods company. While preparing for the event, I was reminded of Darrell’s diaper-delivery idea. I was curious to know how his pretotyping experiments turned out, so I contacted him to get an update. The next day I received an email from him:

  Sorry I didn’t keep you posted as promised, Alberto.

  I ran the experiments we discussed and got good results—enough to convince me that the idea had a really good chance to be The Right It.

  But in the process of doing that I realized that I don’t really want to be in the diaper business. It’s not my thing. I am now pretty sure I can make my idea for the business successful—perhaps even very successful—but I had no fun working on it. To be honest, I hated it! It was a good idea, and someone else should do it, but it won’t be me. I learned that I don’t give a darn about diapers. I don’t even have children. I would just do it for the money, and that’s not good enough. My real passion and interest is soccer. So I will try to come up with a soccer-related idea and use your techniques on that.

  I am sorry for wasting your time and sorry to disappoint you.

  Darrell didn’t waste my time (or his), nor did he disappoint me. Far from it. He didn’t find the diaper business sufficiently, ahem, absorbing. Good for him! He discovered that this industry is not his thing—and that’s a great thing. Better that he discovered that now rather than later, when he would be knee-deep in it.

  When you use pretotyping to test an idea against the market, the idea and the market are also testing you—sort of. So while you are collecting market data about your idea’s market desirability, also keep an eye on its enjoyability. Would you enjoy working with this product, in this market, for the long term? Running a business based on your idea may sound great in Thoughtland, but as Darrell and many aspiring restaurateurs have discovered, the reality is often very different.

  Make sure that your idea is not just a good match for the market, but also a good match for you.

  Make Sure It’s The Right It for the World

  I saved this section for last not because I consider it an afterthought, a postscript, something relatively unimportant. On the contrary, I saved it for last because I consider it to be extremely important. These are the words with which I want to leave you.

  Everything I’ve shared with you up to now has been factual, practical, logical: tools, techniques, tactics; metrics, markets, money; testing, trying, tweaking. Time to shift gears and raise the level of our discourse. Time to get a little philosophical—for your own long-term benefit and that of the world. Don’t worry, I am not going to go all preachy on you. I just want to make sure that now that you have the tools and know-how to help you succeed, you will feel confident to go after bigger, better, more worthwhile ideas. Not every idea is equally worthy of our efforts—even if, technically, it is The Right It.

  Stay Away from Breaking-Bad Ideas

  If we define The Right It based purely on market demand (i.e., lots of people wanting, needing, buying your product) and market success (i.e., a highly profitable multimillion-dollar industry), then crack cocaine, meth, cigarettes, and a number of other recently developed addictive products and substances, both legal and illegal, would qualify.

  Where should you draw the line to determine if an idea is the wrong Right It, a product that will succeed in the market but will do more harm than good to everyone involved in it? I can’t tell you that. I obviously have my own set of totally subjective and biased criteria: crack cocaine, bad; microbrewed beer, good (and single-malt scotch even better). Let a combination of your conscience, local laws, and customs be your guide. Asking yourself, “What would my grandma think of this?” should also steer you right most of the time. (I say should because I don’t know your grandma.)

  With the tools and knowledge that you now have at your disposal, you possess the means to explore and test a wide range of ideas, so there is no reason to get involved in the kind of dangerous, shady, or illegal products and businesses that can get you and others in trouble. Hopefully, your idea for a new business does not involve cooking up a superior variety of meth in the middle of the desert. Don’t go Breaking Bad on me. On the other h
and, if your new idea involves tasty microbrewed beer or single-malt scotch, feel free to send me samples.

  Think Beyond Quick-Buck Ideas

  Some ideas for new products may not violate any laws or customs; they are neither immoral nor unethical. But they are also not the best use of your knowledge, time, and effort. Such ideas may not make the world a worse place, but they won’t make it a better place either—they won’t make much of a difference one way or another. They are the kind of gimmicky products that are bought on impulse, used once or twice, and then tossed away or forgotten.

  Soon after the original iPhone was launched, for example, the market was inundated with all kinds of really silly 99¢ apps: fart machines, simulated paper staplers, virtual cigarette lighters, “games” in which you compete against others to see how many times you can tap on a virtual button, and so on. (Full disclosure: I admit to buying one such app in 2008—but you’ll have to guess which one.) There’s nothing inherently wrong with pursuing quick-buck ideas—especially at the beginning of your career (say, to pay off your student loans) or when you have an urgent need for cash (say, to buy a Tesla . . . just joking . . . well, sort of). But if you have the programming skills to develop a mobile phone app, do you really want to use them to turn a smartphone (which is an amazing tour de force of technology) into a virtual whoopee cushion?

  Think Beyond Business

  Most of the examples in the book are based on business ideas, but all the concepts and tools you learned about can—and should—be applied to other areas. Nonprofit organizations such as charities, hospitals, schools, and even governments are subject to the Law of Market Failure just as much as commercial ventures. Social entrepreneurs measure their success using metrics other than money (e.g., percentage of people with access to clean water, reduction in the number of deaths by malaria, number of freed political prisoners), but they still have to deal with the very high probability that their new idea or approach will not work as well as they think or hope. In fact, when it comes to many of the world’s worst problems (including famines, preventable diseases, and all sorts of violence), we are still desperately looking for solutions that are The Right It. The Beast of Failure will not give you a pass just because you are working for a good cause, but our tools and tactics will help you fight the good fight and win.

  Go for the Right Right It

  What would you build if you knew that it would succeed? What kind of product, service, book, or company would you create?

  The world is full of serious problems waiting for solutions and meaningful opportunities looking for champions. My hope is that what you’ve learned in this book will give you not just the know-how, but the confidence and courage to aim high and to build and bring into the world something of lasting value, something that will make the world better, something worthy—and worthy of you.

  Finding an idea that is The Right It, building It right, achieving market success, and reaping the financial rewards that can come from it feels great. But accomplishing the same with an idea that is particularly meaningful to you and beneficial to the world feels amazing.

  Furthermore, you will discover that if an idea is meaningful to you and beneficial to the world, your odds for success will increase dramatically for two reasons. First, if you really care about the problem you are solving and the market you are serving, you will be much less likely to abandon the idea when you run into your first (second, third, or umpteenth) obstacle. You will find the motivation and energy to keep going and overcome whatever challenges come your way.

  Second, if your product is beneficial and valuable to the world, you will not only experience much less resistance to it, but also find all sorts of unexpected people and organizations popping up to help you and cheer for you along the way because they want to see you and your idea succeed.

  So don’t settle on just any idea. Look for an idea that is the right Right It—an idea that, if competently executed, will not only be successful in the market, but will also be meaningful to you and beneficial to the world. Then do It justice and build It right.

  I am rooting for you!

  The beast is still there.

  Still waiting. Still hungry.

  Unchanged and unchangeable.

  Ready to fight . . .

  and so am I.

  Acknowledgments

  First and foremost, I want to acknowledge and thank Stanford University professor Tina Seelig. Tina has not only been an amazing supporter and champion of my work for many years, but she, more than anyone else, has encouraged, pushed, and prodded me to stop making excuses and to “just sit down and write the darn book.” The fact that Tina managed to publish two books of her own—and begin work on a third one—while I kept procrastinating provided me with the motivation and embarrassment I needed to get going. Tina, it’s safe to say that without you this book would still only exist in my own private Thoughtland. Thank you so much; you are a gem.

  Next, I want to thank HarperOne’s Gideon Weil for reviewing my original book proposal and for convincing me that I had something unique and worthwhile to share. Gideon and the entire HarperOne team (Laina Adler, Judith Curr, Kim Dayman, Mary Duke, Adrian Morgan, Ann Moru, Courtney Nobile, Sydney Rogers, Lisa Zuniga, and the designer, Terry McGrath) have been fantastic to work with. I feel privileged to have Levine Greenberg Rostan as my literary agency—thank you, Jim Levine, for taking me under your very wise and experienced wing.

  A most heartfelt thank-you to our dear friend Natalie “once an English teacher, always an English teacher” Panfili for her invaluable editing, feedback, and suggestions as I wrote the first draft. Knowing that I could count on Natalie to review my work-in-progress gave me the motivation and confidence I needed to keep going—even when the end seemed impossibly distant. If writing a book were a marathon (and at times it felt like it), Natalie would be the friend running alongside me to make sure I made it to the finish line. Natalie, we did!

  The second group I want to acknowledge and thank are the many people who, in one way or another, helped me develop, refine, and share the material covered in this book.

  The original set of concepts and tools for The Right It and pretotyping were first developed and tested at Google with the participation of hundreds of Google team members. Unfortunately, I cannot acknowledge them all, but a few individuals and teams deserve special mention. Eric Schmidt and Wayne Rosing, who not only hired me and mentored me as a young engineer at Sun Microsystems, but also gave me the honor and opportunity of a lifetime by hiring me again as Google’s first engineering director. Urs Hölzle, for his wise guidance and support. Patrick Copeland, who got stuck managing me when I began to experiment with “that pretotyping thing” and who has been a great evangelist and supporter ever since. The original Unleash the Innovators team of pretotypers: Bob Evans, C.P. Lim, Stephen Uhler, and Deanna Chen. Cecelia Wogan-Silva, the first to bring me and my work outside Google and beyond Silicon Valley. Google’s Chief Innovation Evangelist and Stanford d.school adjunct professor Frederik G. Pferdt. A final—and very special—thank-you goes to Google’s amazing Executive Summits team, for giving me the opportunity to share The Right It and pretotyping with many of the world’s largest and most influential companies—thank you, Brandi Andrews Mihailovski, Alaina Beeman, Christina Carroll, Alan Eagle, Mike Emling, Matthew Hubbard, Kristie Lane, Michele Maiorino Kelly, Jessica Michaelis, Theresa O’Connell, Ivonne Tamariz, Kristin Villanueva, and Jessica Webb.

  Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Baba Shiv gets the credit, and has my deepest appreciation, for being the first to invite me to give a lecture on pretotyping at Stanford. Grazie, Baba! Since that first lecture in 2011, I’ve had the pleasure and honor to teach, coach, and share pretotyping with hundreds of Stanford students and visiting executives through lectures, courses, and workshops. In addition to Baba Shiv and Tina Seelig, I would like to acknowledge and thank the following members of Stanford’s faculty and staff for all the amazing teaching opportunities and sup
port they’ve given me over the years: Tania Abedian, Tom Byers, Leticia Britos Cavagnaro, Chuck Eesley, Mark Grundberg, Matt Harvey, Rachel Julkowski, Riitta Katila, Harjoth Khara, Tom Kosnik, Michael Peña, Navdeep Sahni, Anaïs Saint-Jude, Nikkie Salgado, Eli Shell, Ryan Shiba, and Danielle Steussy.

  The proverb “As you teach, you learn” proved to be true again and again. I cannot think of a single pretotyping project, workshop, class, or talk where I did not learn something new or find a way to improve on existing material. So, a huge thank-you to all my students.

  In 2011, I invested one week to write and edit (sort of) the short booklet Pretotype It, a pretotype version of this book, which I then released as a free PDF. I have no idea how many thousands of people have read Pretotype It, because over the years it has been shared on countless websites and translated by volunteers into a dozen languages. But the many emails I received from readers all over the world who loved the booklet and urged me to “write a proper book” with more tools and examples gave me the data and motivation I needed to write this book. Thank you all.

  Some of my former students, colleagues, and readers took their interest in my work a step further and became master practitioners, evangelists, and teachers of pretotyping tools and techniques. Thanks to them, these ideas are now being taught, refined, and practiced in many countries and organizations I could have never reached myself. A few of these invaluable partners in pretotyping deserve a special mention. In the US: Jeremy Clark, Patrick Copeland, Rich Cox, Eric Alessandrini, Michael Thomas. In Europe: Leonardo Zangrando, Tim Vang, Dan Cobley, Elalami Lafkih. In Australia and Asia: Leslie Barry.