I was once in a meeting with Jeff Bezos where he said, “Stop pitching me on ideas. Ideas are cheap. I had ten of them in the shower this morning!”
When working with smart and ambitious people, there is a constant stream of “good” ideas. To Jeff’s point, coming up with ideas isn’t all that hard. He went on to point out that the hard part is refining and picking the best ideas, finding the leader, and building the idea into successful products or services.
The challenge is that there is an infinite amount of customer and business problems that can be worked on. Smart and ambitious people see these problems and think of solutions.
The result is that the number of potential projects to work on far outnumbers the resources available. So, resources must be allocated to only the best and most viable ideas.
This is where the Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions process (PR/FAQ) comes in.
When a product idea is turned into a narrative document using the Press Release and Frequently Asked Questions format, you start to see the cracks in many ideas. Some don’t have a big enough TAM to be worth the effort, and others fail to offer a solution to a customer problem that is truly better, faster or cheaper than the competition. Others have too many unanswered questions or unresolved problems.
Ideas with these issues are sidelined.
Done right, the best ideas make it through the PR/FAQ process and turn into new businesses or products.
The way to think about this is you want a product funnel, not a product tunnel. In a funnel, lots of ideas come in, but only the best survive the resource allocation process. In a tunnel, most ideas end up being built, which robs precious resources from the best ideas.
If you want to learn to use the PR/FAQ process, read more on our site: https://lnkd.in/gpDywWED
