Many of us develop products for which we are certain we will become rich and famous.  However, that road- in spite of what one might consider tremendous publicity- is rarely traveled.  For every one success story, there are at least 100 failures.  Many of those “not-get-rich-quick-inventions” involve products or systems that have technological elegance, but fail to solve the “why”problem- why does someone want to spend money to use or acquire your innovation.

I am not saying I am immune to such beliefs.  I have had my share- but, using another axiom that I have learned to appreciate over my professional career, we learn far more from our failures than our successes.

Over the years, I have invented devices or products with which you are very familiar (or, perhaps, vaguely familiar). In the early 80’s, we developed a home dry cleaning product. But, back then, it was only America that had dryers- and most Americans were not interested in the product.  So, it languished for two decades or so, when it was reintroduced to more than moderate success.  I could add on portable baby baths, home water purification systems, among some 50 to 60 great product prototypes.  The common thread is that while we understood the technical issues at hand, the world either did not consider them threatening or were more interested in the newest “pet rock” phenomenon.

That’s not to say we did not have our successes.  But, most of those successes involved efforts where we were operating in very technical/specialized environments, or for our consumer products, where we had business partners who were able to and prepared to spend the money to insure their success.  And, generally, we were not really going to be the marketing entity (we were a design/develop entity then; we either developed our own concepts for market or helped you see your ideas reach fruition).

When one develops products or processes, there must be a clear understanding of the difference between constraints and problems.  Gravity and inertia are constraints- one is not going to develop an airplane or an automobile braking system by assuming that they can be “solved” away.  One must abide by and account for constraints.  We can- and must- solve our design problems.

Using the dry cleaning product as an example, in the early 80’s, the lack of dryers world-wide was a constraint.  The problems that we needed to address with our product included insuring that the dirt on the clothes was not re-deposited after the cleaning process and proving to the customer that the clothes were cleaner.  (I admit we solved the first squarely; we handled the second employing scientific data, but the consumer was more convinced by the added scent one associated with “clean” clothes.)

Some entrepreneurs are certain they can solve their funding problems or technology scaling problems, even though they lack the skills, background, or scale to do so.  Some are lucky- but most of us should consider these as constraints and design around them.  The trick is to discern the difference between a constraint (for you, for me) and a problem- and therein lies the art we acquire via our experiences (learning through failures).

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