Building For Everyone

CHAPTER 4Building the Case for Product Inclusion and Getting Buy‐In

To succeed in developing a product or service with universal appeal, you must first get several levels in your organization onboard, from leadership down to the people who design, develop, test, and market the product. Ideally, you would have universal buy‐in on the importance of product inclusion from those responsible for each product's success. Through universal buy‐in, you significantly reduce the likelihood that key actors will merely follow the status quo, performing their jobs as they always have done, while at the same time you energize everyone involved to create truly inclusive products.

To change the way people in your organization think and act, you need to rally the troops, which requires building a strong case for product inclusion and getting buy‐in from top to bottom.

Building the Case for Product Inclusion

Building the case for product inclusion actually requires that you build two cases to convince others of its importance:

• Human case: Typically a story that illustrates the importance of product inclusion to historically underrepresented consumers.
• Business case: Facts and figures that present the benefits of product inclusion from a business perspective.

Of course, you may get people to come on board by using only one case or the other. If an untapped market has a ton of potential, for example, a business case may be sufficient to bring everyone onboard. However, if the business case ...