Richard Turere represents everything I admire in an entrepreneur without even intending to be one. This natural entrepreneur did with little resources, no supporting organizations and without any higher education (he is only 13!) look at the problem and came up with a solution. Spend the next 7 minutes watching this video and see if you get the same feeling of genuine happiness as I did. :-)

https://www.ted.com/talks/richard_turere_a_peace_treaty_with_the_lions

Since my favourite topic is start-ups I will use this splendid project as an example and look at several areas.

Market analysis

For Richard the market analysis was easy since he represents the market. And since he had no intentions selling the product it was not an issue. In an earlier post I talked about Technology Push and Market Pull and this story is such a great example of the latter. There was obviously a clear need: To stop lions from killing the livestock, and with the conditions;
a. Not kill lions,
b. Get sleep,
c. At minimum cost,
d. ASAP.

A lot of start-ups I have come across have the most fantastic ideas or technical solutions but lack the knowledge about the market. They have not analysed the market in full. This is not only an exercise of checking existing problems in the market to see a need, but just as much, if not more, to understand the market barriers. Barriers might be the time to exchange an existing product (you have to survive during that period) or maybe your way of charging for your product may not fit the customer.

I’ll give you an example from my own experience. This was a helicopter based Search & Rescue System. We had developed a magnificent product, a technical masterpiece, tested it on long range search and asked the potential customer if they liked it. They did, and the saw a big need for it. They even planned for live helicopter testing in a major Swedish city and we were very excited to say the least. But we did a big big mistake. We did not know market barriers.

Since we were selling to the government they have a yearly budget. The governmental steering committee sets the budget in December, but to be able to have the information from a huge organisation the sub-units have to send in their budget requests in October. After negotiations, politics, lobbying, etc. etc. the budget is set and in January they can start buying. This means that if you don´t have a “buy in” in October and is included in next year’s budget you will not sell anything the next year.

So how should we get that “buy in”? From our perspective we would have needed to have the product tested from a capability perspective (the products ability to do what we say it will do and of course get them to like it) and from a compliance perspective (does it follow all regulations necessary so they are allowed to buy it). Adding on the Swedish vacation period I realized that my project plan was completely out of sync with the real world. And then it was too late.

We did have a great product solving a huge problem (people are reported missing every day) but we did not know the market conditions.

Fail fast and succeed faster

Richard tested different solutions, understood what did not work, and changed the product. So as much as you have to be patient and really stubborn to realize your idea, you have to know when to change path, when to skip that solution and move to the next. Sometimes maybe you should be like Thomas Edison, really stubborn. The problem is to know when. 

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
Thomas Edison

A threat, common in the start-up world, is that when sales doesn’t pick up you start to further develop the product to meet the market needs better: “If we just change and adjust some things sales will pick up”. If you spend the majority of your time out there asking potential customers and implementing that feed-back that’s fine, but if you “hide” in the office it’s usually a bad sign and you end up with an empty bank account and a really nice product (you think). So fail fast and succeed faster is not about sitting at home inventing, it is about being out there testing.

Minimum Viable Product

Richard used existing technology and built a system without much funding (BIG understatement). The best way for you to get your idea/product funded is to actually have the product ready and tested, and ultimately even a customer. This might seem like Catch 22, and sorry guys, it usually is. So with whatever funding you can find you should try to make a Minimum Viable Product. This is the most basic product you can make to show the functionality and (hopefully) get an early friendly customer (use your network to the max).

Since I am somewhat late into Steemit I don´t know what it looked like in the very beginning, but we can agree on the fact that it is not a fully-fledged product. And yet it is very successful. Most certainly they use all possible feed-back to develop the system to meet the customer needs, for free. How convenient!

Invention or innovation?

I think “Lion lights” is a perfect innovation, not an invention as the title says. According to me an invention is something completely new while an innovation is using or adjusting existing products or services to offer a new one. When the zipper came 1851 it was a completely new solution and replaced buttons, an invention. Nowadays we have water proof zippers in our ski jacket, a refinement of an existing product, thus an innovation. Why is this important? Well most of us will never be able to invent something, but the majority of us can innovate. And it is just great that we can use existing products to offer new ones whether called innovation or invention. If you innovate the commercial set-up (from paying per minute to fixed price), a ski apparel (e.g. using the NASA invention “Gore-Tex” as “breathable material”) or merge a phone, a music player and a camera into an iPhone, it is just great that we can use existing products to offer new ones whether called innovation or invention.

//Andreas