The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

14.1. Introduction

Products and services that don't solve peoples' problems, or don't solve them at a competitive cost, fail. Motorola discovered this with Iridium. Iridium's general purpose was to "enable wireless communication worldwide." However, in developing a solution to this general problem, potential customers were not asked about the details of or the specifics of what that means. Thus, the technology solution chosen—satellite delivery to a bulky phone requiring a large antenna for in-car use that was very expensive to buy or use—did not meet the physical functionality customers wanted simultaneously with the communications functionality. The result was predictable: the demise of Iridium, with an $8 billion development write-off.

NOTE

The most successful new products match a set of fully understood consumer problems with a cost competitive solution to those problems.

The most successful product development efforts match a set of fully understood customer problems to a cost-competitive solution to those problems. "The devil is in the details," as they say. Palm's first Palm Pilot® was successful because the development team interacted extensively with potential users to understand the details of both form and function. Functionally, they identified that people were using a combination of computer- and paper-based organizing and memory tools, and the mix changed depending upon whether they were at or near their computer or away from it. The solution to these problems was ...