Maverick ideas
When you create a product, it is important to ask the question ‘how it connects with its users?’. Finally the product exists because of its user base. Often we get lost into the making of the product or ideating and lose sight of the user. On the other hand, if you start questioning from a user point of view and try to imagine a product that will be useful for them, you cannot imagine great things.
For example, if you think of making a flying car, you can get lost into the details of the engineering. You can go on like this for years. One day you wake up to ask who else other than you will be interested in this. There may be some investors who also had the same dream and may find it interesting and may be ready to fund you further. But ultimately if you hadn’t thought about how you can make people use your flying car, how much they will pay for it, how they can get a test ride and experience it etc. you may find you have a superior engineering to make it, but it cannot reach its intended audience.
On the other hand, if you just keep thinking of a flying car as a ‘user need’ you will not proceed one inch, because it is such an impossible idea and you will be ready to dismiss it at the first thought of it as no one will be willing to believe you unless they see it. Many maverick ideas thus reside as ideas in science fiction novels and never take off.
The magic of making a large number of users finding value in a product requires thinking from both sides. A maverick idea that can also connect back to the user easily so a large number of them finds value in that idea.
The early smartphones never took off with its clunky keyboard filling half the screen. It was sure to drive away its users and may only keep those who had no choice. Reimagining it into a fully touch based device was a revolutionary idea. That immediately connected with a large user base and the magic happened. The story appears to fit in on hindsight. It is very hard to get it right and going in reality.
We need a combination of a simple mind and a complex mind at the same time to arrive at such things. An eye for detail as well as a birds view. You have to be an explorer to go after maverick ideas. It is about a journey that may or may not have an end. You may discover things which you didn’t intend to when you began.
Elon Musk’s quest to go to Mars made him work on the reusable rocket and he could use the advantage of cheaper launch to conceive of Starlink a network of LEO satellites to power internet across the globe.
It is always the maverick ideas that have the potential to open up new spaces and not just economy, but changes culture and our living itself.
