Imagine for a second that cake doesn’t exist.
But you believe it’s possible and can see its potential as a new commercial offering.
Naturally, the first step is to figure out how to make one.
Planning will help.
However, how do you plan cake when it’s still a mere spark of genius in your mind?
The reality is, it will still take an unpredictable amount of time and effort to figure out the design through trial and error.
In other words, plenty of experimentation.
It’s the same across the board, no matter the product or service – a B2B SaaS solution, a FinTech innovation, or cake.
Sooner or later, you figure out the essential ingredients and proportions of each that will create the cake you imagined.
But it came at a cost – both in time and resources.
And that’s just part of the story.
Because if your goal is to sell cake, you’ll also need to identify:
- Who will buy cake?
- Why might they want or need cake?
- What type of cake do they prefer?
- Where might they go looking to buy cake?
- When are they likely to buy cake?
- How much might they pay for cake?
All the fundamental elements and market insights that must exist around your cake idea to establish a business selling them could end up taking even more time and resources to figure out than creating the cake itself.
The result?
You have a recipe that combines flour, sugar, baking powder, butter, eggs, vanilla, and milk.
The mixed batter goes into a greased tin and then baked in a moderate oven until golden.
A cake is pretty simple once you know how.
So, too, is the experience needed to determine your market, sell your concept, and fulfil customer orders.
You come to realise the process was far from easy.
But the answers end up looking rather obvious and simple in hindsight.
It’s like learning how a magic trick is done – the illusion quickly turns from entirely unfathomable to something plainly obvious.
Herein lies the difficulty of innovation.
The very nature of navigating the unchartered waters of an innovation journey means it’s easy to over or under-invest at every turn.
Consider our cake example again.
Perhaps you noticed that barley was significantly cheaper by the tonne during your experimentation phase. So it was a good decision to buy in bulk when you thought barley flour would be a suitable ingredient for cake.
But later, after your initial experiments, you ultimately figured out that wheat flour made a much better cake than barley flour – meaning your bulk-barley purchase was a gross over-investment in hindsight.
This is the trouble with innovation.
So, how can you successfully break new ground without breaking your business along the way?
The first key factor is iteration.
It gives you the luxury of making all the necessary mistakes that help you create the very best version of your product or service without over-investing. In this way, iteration allows you to start again without starting over.
Another crucial factor is carrying out small, low-cost experiments.
But that’s not all.
There are hundreds of factors that support a journey of innovation.
You could try to discover all these yourself, hoping your team and existing network have most of this figured out.
Or you could team up with LeapSheep.
Helping our founders navigate this journey is what we’re committed to for the long haul.
Not only do we expertly steer you through the path of least resistance, but we’re also a long way towards systemising the entire process.
This means no longer relying solely on lived experience and intuition.
Instead, you can access shortcuts thanks to the reliability of algorithms and our growing bank of data.
Sound good?
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If you’re a founder who’s keen to break new ground and would like some help to stay on the right course, fill out this short questionnaire, and we’ll get in touch to help you with your next steps.
Whenever you’re ready, here’s how we can help you.
If you’ve got a startup idea, or you’ve already embarked on your journey – you might be facing one or both of these situations.
- You’re struggling while going it alone. Worse, you’re wading in the muddy waters of some not-so-great advice.
- Perhaps you’re trying to raise capital for your startup and you’re hitting a dead end. Raising capital is a notoriously difficult thing to do. Globally, only 0.74% of startups manage to raise capital at Seed stage. Despite this, 16% of startups we’ve worked with were able to raise capital at Seed stage.
If you’re ready to step up and get the help you need, our Startup Builder™ program was created especially for you.
The Startup Builder™ process is specifically designed to take you all the way from idea to global success – in a way that’s simple, sustainable, and scalable.
If you’re ready to grow your revenue, profit, and social impact faster without wasting time and money on the wrong things at the wrong time, click here to request your Startup Builder™ Strategy Session.
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