FINDING THE RIGHT PRODUCT MARKET FIT IS CRITICAL FOR STARTUPS AND CORPORATE VENTURES. SOREN KAPLAN, INNOVATION CONSULTANT TO THIRTY FORTUNE ONE THOUSAND COMPANIES AND CO-FOUNDER OF PRAXIE.COM, SHARES STEPS OF SCALING A BUSINESS QUICKLY TO REDUCE RISK AND INCREASE CHANCES OF SUCCESS.
When it comes to scaling your business, you first need to really understand if you have something that is needed and desired and scalable. Have you validated the need in the market? Have you validated your biggest assumptions about the market? So being able to come up with an experiment and collect data through real customer interactions will help you figure out, have you validated the hypothesis to then test your assumptions. What is that risky assumption about your offering or about the business model that you really have that will tell you that there's an opportunity or not?
The second thing is defining your hypothesis. What hypothesis do you need to test to validate or invalidate your assumption? Then you need to conduct experiments to test or hypothesis. So gather data by doing something, talking to customers, trying to sell something online, whatever it might be.
SOREN SAYS, DON’T BE SO ATTACHED TO THE SOLUTION BECAUSE WHAT YOU CREATE INITIALLY WILL PROBALBY CHANGE.
So that then number five, you can make conclusions based on the data. So based on what you found and discovered, should you make changes to your product, your service, or your business model, or maybe throw it out altogether and try something new.
“BUSINESS REVIEW” IS A PRODUCTION OF LIVINGSTON & MCKAY AND THE HANKAMER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS AT BAYLOR UNIVERSITY.