By Yani Deros - President / Founder ATOM / STREAM Research

     

Nobody wants to start a company with the idea it might fail. That would be a buzz kill and defeat the power in the innovation. But like many, most never even consider it.

Yet even optimistic entrepreneurs need a reality check before beginning a process that will sap them of their time, energy and money- as well as their investors.

The truth is the majority of startups fail. That’s harsh. But such statistics are not meant to quash new ideas, but rather to help the entrepreneur work through the process of innovating smarter, faster and more efficiently.

Scottsdale and Boston-based ATOM Product Development and Innovation has been helping companies of all sizes and stages succeed since 2003. Our full-service firm has developed more than 280 product and technology solutions for clients ranging from start-ups to multi-billion dollar corporations including LG, Legrand and Honeywell.

To learn why startups fail so disastrously, one only needs to look at trends, facts and read numerous articles online, some even written by founders easing the pain of their startup postmortem.

According to Forbes, 90% fail. And the number one reason why is because founders build a product or solution that nobody wants. When companies lack solid insights and an understanding of their customers’ needs they will invariably fail to develop and launch the right product. This isn’t unique to just entrepreneurs, surprisingly even mid-to-large corporations believe they already know who their customers are and race frantically to market to fulfill lofty revenue goals. To achieve the best results, it is imperative for organizations, banking on these new solutions, to build a strategy of tapping into “the voice of the customer” to drive new product specifications, features, functionality and technology that will lead to market success.

Customer engagement has always been an essential and critical part of ATOM’s proven product development process. Gathering the customers’ true insights and unmet needs becomes a catalyst to strategically connecting them with the features and benefits of the new solutions. ATOM continues to advance a unique process which allows the team to concurrently conduct market/user research in parallel with full product development by using its proprietary methodology, STREAM Research. This allows for a compressed development cycle driving a validated solution to market faster with a higher degree of confidence that it aligns with their customers’ expectations.

With STREAM, ATOM offers several offerings to connect with your target customers and consumers to capture their true voice. These include rapid consumer panels and surveys to full-blown online communities consisting of hundreds to thousands of individuals for either B2B or B2C research efforts. (Imagine a focus group on steroids!)

The market can change so dramatically and reviews can propel or inhibit sales. Nowadays everyone needs to understand they have only one shot at launching the right innovative product solution to solve a real need, and if that idea doesn’t pan out…well, a lot of time and investment was just wasted!

So as you contemplate developing your next big idea and going all in, consider this: Would you rather connect with your customers today and learn your idea is wrong and find the best way to realign and revise? Or would you rather scramble to connect with your customers after all the investment, development completed, tooling finished, and discover your idea missed the mark? The decision should be crystal clear.

ATOM’s STREAM Research methodology coupled with its world class product development capabilities allows companies of all sizes to embrace a proven process that delivers a robust Product and Technology Roadmap. This is influenced by harvesting deeper insights and needs while launching into the market faster with a better positioned and defined solution that was created with the true voice of YOUR customer who will want to buy YOUR product.

This ultimately delivers the confidence and ability to generate revenue as a result of knowing that your target audience will adopt, embrace and aspire to own the solution that gets launched! To learn more about how ATOM can be an extension of your team to drive success to your bottom line Contact Us Today!