Duck and Bunny

Quite often companies rush to hurry & sell a product before they speak to their customers about what the customers want. A company will take an idea, vaguely speak with the customer once or twice, pour time and money into developing the final product/solution, then run and start selling. Without taking the time to speak with the customer or put a minimum viable product in front of them, companies often waste their time and money--not realizing they are building one product when the customer really wants something completely different. I am not saying that a company should sit and wait to build anything; rather, they should get the customer involved as soon as possible to avoid building a solution that does not fit.

This summer I saw this play out firsthand. At times, the business units I worked with were so anxious to take an idea and start selling it that they didn't bother to speak with customers to find out if the product they came up with even solved any pain (problem). The customers were then sold a product that didn't fit their needs, or worse yet, that they didn't need at all. As a result, the customers wrote off the company as someone who did not understand their needs or didn't offer products that fit their needs.

We were there to help our client take a step back in the product development process. Before any development even started, we helped the company sit down and speak with the customer to ask about their needs/pains, work with them to find out what they need in a solution, change the hypothesis/product, re-evaluate with the customer, and repeat.

Shifting the focus to solving the pain rather then focusing on shipping and selling seems counter-intuitive and may feel like you are moving slow or not at all. In reality, however, it allows you to move faster because changes can happen quicker, you can easily pivot, and you are not spending months and months on developing one product when the customer really wants something completely different.

In an effort to help our client understand this principle, I created a video that highlights the problems of focusing on development and selling instead of focusing on the customer and their pain/needs.

In the video, the "company" shows the customer a ambiguous drawing that could be interpreted as either duck or a bunny. The customer sees/wants a bunny; the company sees/builds a duck, and hurries to build and sell a product. When the company gets feedback that the customer wants something different, the company hurries to make changes--but since they have spent so much time into building a duck, they can only make small changes to try and make the duck fit for what the customer wants. If the company would have taken a bit more time at the beginning to speak with the customer or involve them more in the development process, they would have realized they were building a duck, when all the customer wanted was a bunny.

Enjoy!

Duck and Bunny from Curt Smith on Vimeo.

Internship

The summer has finally come to a close and I start back at school today. The summer was filled with lots of work, travel and learning. I had the opportunity to intern with a company call "The Bennion Group."

After interviewing at several other companies and turning down a few other offers, I decided to take an internship working at a consulting company in Provo, UT. As I started my search for an internship at the beginning of school, I said that I really did not care where I went as long as it was a large well known company, outside of Utah. As you can tell, I did not stick to my original plan. Not because I did not have offers from big companies outside of Utah, but because I decided to made my choice based off of the experience I would gain.

After speaking with other students about their internships, I am glad I made the decision I did. Although I did not intern for a large corporation outside of Utah, I was able to consult a HUGE corporation (ranked among the top 500 global companies.) In addition, working at a smaller organization allowed me to have a great deal of responsibility as well as gain some greatexperience.

The majority of my work was consulting for a corporate business incubator helping validate business ideas, test markets, develop new products, and help build business plans and go-to-market plans and strategies. We did this through business competitive intelligence, marketresearch, customer interviews, and internal and external analysis. In addition to consulting for other companies, I was also able to help with business development within the company and help prepare training and presentation material.

All in all, I was very happy with my decision to go with a small company and the skills andexperience I gained. I was still able to get experience in a large corporation but still have asignificant impact.

Now, I am excited to return to school for two more semesters and move forward with my career.