Just Evil Enough

Chapter 23:

 

Buyer upgrade

At the core of the Lean Startup movement is a simple cycle: build a product; measure how it performs in the market; and learn how to change it. The end goal of this iteration is to find product/market fit: adjusting what you make until it’s exactly what your target market wants. Product managers exist because products can be managed.

But what about market-product fit?

Building something, then hoping someone will care, is almost always a bad idea. But for materials scientists, that’s often the way an experiment becomes a household name. Post-It, Viagra, Play-Doh, Gore-Tex, and Bubble Wrap were all invented first and sought a killer use case later. Just because you’ve found a market that will buy your product doesn’t ...