Why Your “I Wish This Tool Existed”
Idea Could be a Market Hit

These products were invented or dreamed up to solve actual problems, real problems the individuals needed to solve.They didn’t wish this tool or idea existed , they were not able to find other solutions and chose to create their own. And if they had a problem, chances are high that someone else is facing similar challenges.

Let me share my own recent invention, a device which projects lines on treadmills to improve running. While preparing for a triathlon, I realized I needed to improve my feet position.

This task takes conscious efforts with each step to ensure that feet are positioned correctly.

My idea was a device with a laser that will show where my feet need to land with each step. This device can train my brain and my body so my feet land right each time I step, thanks to Pavlov’s effect – the more you do something, the quicker it will become a habit.

There are no similar products on the market and there are thousands, if not millions of runners, who need similar training. A problem in my everyday life with no solution – it made me think.

The marketing world has a simple framework – “Job Gets Done”. Given that marketing and new product development both strive to make the life of a potential customer better, this framework is very applicable in product development. The phrase simply reminds us to invent products which do a job and do that job right.

Why do I think this way? The structure of a market, seen from the customers’ point of view, is very simple: They just need to get things done, as Ted Levitt said. When people find themselves needing to get a job done, they essentially hire products to do that job for them.

The marketer’s or inventor’s task is therefore, to understand what jobs arise in customers’ lives and determine which jobs they might use products to do. They could then make these products.

If an inventor or product manager can understand the job, or even experience the need for it himself, then he can design a product to do that job, and deliver it in a way that reinforces its intended use. When customers find themselves needing to accomplish that goal, they will hire that product.

In other words, the job, not the customer, is the fundamental factor when deciding to move forward with an idea. By developing a product that completes that job, the customers will buy. And while testing prototypes or even market size feasibility – those customers are the best go-no go factors.

He founded it to help people sell personal items. Google was designed for the job of finding information, not for a “search demographic.” The unit of analysis in the work that led to Procter & Gamble’s stunningly successful Swiffer was the job of cleaning floors, not a demographic or psychographic study of people who mop. All these companies reached success their founders most likely hadn’t even dreamed about.

New growth markets are born when innovative individuals or companies design a product and position its brand to do a job for which no optimal product yet exists.

In fact, large and small companies that historically have segmented and measured the size of their markets by product category generally find that when they instead segment by job, their market is much larger, and their current share of the job is much smaller, than they had thought originally. This is great news for smart companies hungry for growth.

– Discover an actual challenge you or your customers are trying to solve (Job).

– Identify when a person experiences the challenge? During pregnancy? Home renovation? Organizing their desk? Or business process workflow? Circumstances are more important than customer characteristics, product attributes, new technologies, or trends.

– Design a solution. Good innovations solve problems that currently have inadequate solutions, or no solution at all.

– Jobs are never simply about function. Generally they have powerful social and emotional dimensions. Keep notes of what you or your customers experience, even phrases you use to describe the challenge.

– Design, prototype, and test the product yourself and with the target audience. Repeat this process until you have the solution which best solves the problem.

– Create customer experiences when delivering the message and performing the job.

– Align internal and external processes. Start with the design, prototyping, and market entry processes and continue with all other processes until consumers will understand and be able to use your solution.

While inventing your product, keep track of all the emotions, thoughts, and phrases you had when looking for a solution. Write them all down. This information is priceless when it comes to designing a marketing message and shaping value propositions.

If your organization would like to work with us to solve a problem and develop a new product, you can reach us at hello@lanpdt.com or schedule a consultation now!

Schedule a Consultation

Sources:

https://hbr.org/2005/12/marketing-malpractice-the-cause-and-the-cure

https://hbr.org/2004/07/marketing-myopia

Individual inventors often succeed because they create products to solve their own real problems. If the inventor faces a challenge, it is likely that others share similar needs. This approach focuses on developing a solution for an existing, unmet need, increasing the product's market potential by addressing actual user demands.

The 'Job Gets Done' framework views products as solutions hired by customers to perform specific tasks. This means inventors should focus on understanding what jobs customers need to accomplish, rather than solely on demographics. Successful products effectively do a job and do it right, leading to customer adoption.

Companies like eBay and Google focused on addressing specific jobs, not just customer demographics. eBay helped people sell personal items, and Google facilitated finding information. Procter & Gamble's Swiffer was designed for the job of cleaning floors. This job-centric approach identifies unmet needs and creates growth markets.

First, discover an actual challenge you or customers need to solve. Identify the circumstances surrounding this challenge. Then, design a solution that addresses inadequate or absent current solutions. Prototype and test the product, repeating the process until the problem is best solved. Align internal and external processes to ensure effective delivery.

Circumstances reveal when a person experiences a challenge, which is crucial for identifying an unmet job. This is more important than customer characteristics, product attributes, new technologies, or trends. Understanding the situation helps design solutions for specific problems, making the product relevant and valuable to customers seeking to get a job done.

Inventions that come from a personal frustration start with a real advantage: the inventor has lived the problem, knows the context, and can describe the failure precisely. That advantage evaporates the moment it is mistaken for proof. The question validation answers is not "is this a good idea" — it is "how many other people have this problem often enough, and painfully enough, to pay for a solution."

The productive way to run validation is as a ladder of increasingly expensive evidence, where each rung is only climbed if the previous one held. Most ideas fail on the first two rungs, which is exactly the point: the cheapest possible way to be wrong. What remains after the ladder is not certainty, but a defensible reason to spend tooling money — and a requirement set worth handing into a real product development process.

Notice the ordering: the patent search comes first, because it is nearly free and it kills the largest share of ideas. The rung most inventors skip is the third — willingness to pay — usually because it is uncomfortable. It is also the one that determines whether the product can be manufactured at all, since the retail ceiling divided by four to five gives the landed cost target the whole design must fit inside. That target drives material, process and part-count decisions in design for manufacturing.

One caution about the scratch-your-own-itch origin: the inventor is an unusual user. You know the workaround, tolerate the setup, and forgive the rough edge. That is why rung four is unmoderated — hand the unit over, say nothing, and watch. Almost every meaningful design change we make on inventor-led programs comes out of that silence, and turning those findings into a manufacturable design is the work we do in prototype design and consulting engagements.

Work up a ladder: patent and marketplace search first (nearly free), then 12-20 interviews with people who have the problem, then a pricing test, then a functional prototype tested unmoderated, then a small paid pilot. Set a written kill criterion at each rung and stop the moment one is missed — most ideas end on the first two rungs, which is the cheapest place to end.

Realistically $1,000-8,000 to get through prior art, interviews and pricing, and $3,000-15,000 more for a functional prototype and user trials. A paid pilot run adds $10,000-60,000 depending on tooling approach. Spending in that order means most of the money is only committed after the cheap evidence has held.

File a provisional application before any public disclosure if the idea is genuinely novel — it is inexpensive, holds a priority date for twelve months, and lets you validate openly during that window. Do not spend on a full utility filing before rungs two and three, since most ideas are stopped by the market rather than by the patent office.

Twelve to twenty people who genuinely have the problem is usually enough to see whether the pain is frequent and expensive; answers repeat well before twenty. Sample size matters far more for pricing work, where 150-300 respondents is the practical minimum for a usable price ceiling.