December 7, 2009

One thing every company has in common is a desire to innovate. Whether it means creating entirely new products or improving existing ones, we are all familiar with the anxiety that accompanies all things new. All too often, we strive to get everything right the first time around. As a consequence, our products suffer from costly delays and insufficient feedback prior to launch.

For a solution, we can steal a page from the playbook of modern internet and technology companies that have pioneered the practice of “launching in beta.” As you may know, most of Google’s products are launched in beta (with bugs and all) for the world to adopt. The “Labs” icon in the top right hand corner of Gmail is a treasure trove of quickly executed ideas that Google is testing. Some are clearly half-baked, but all are available.

Sometimes it’s best to launch a product before it’s perfect. I call this acting without conviction. You may be uncertain – and some things may remain unfinished – but you’ve got to push it out. Why? The reasons are both practical and psychological.

On a practical level, you can only get feedback and real user data when the product is released. Google makes major changes to their products while they are in beta – and these changes are made based on rock-solid analytics. Also, if there are fundamental flaws in your assumptions about your product, you will realize them more quickly if it’s live. Rather than spending many months (and lots of money) on the finer details, getting early feedback can lead to priceless realizations.

On a psychological level, a team thinks differently once the first version of a product is up and running. Rather than working for a hypothetical group of customers, everything you do affects real people. Your team will become more expedient and start to think of the project in smaller chunks rather than as an insurmountable giant.

Even Apple, a company that is known for perfection and control, releases products with known shortfalls in exchange for market data and an early impact in the marketplace. Inside chatter that I’ve heard suggests that the critical “copy/cut/paste” functionality, noticeably absent from the early iPhones, simply wasn’t good enough yet at the time of launch. Rather than hold it back, Apple released the product anyway. And when they figured out the right solution, they upgraded the functionality many months later.

Especially for those perfectionists among us, it is important to weigh the benefits and costs of extending development. Oftentimes, the bounty of information and insight garnered from a premature launch is greater than the cost of early adopters finding a few bugs — and bringing them to your attention!

***This article is based on research by Behance CEO Scott Belsky, whose book, Making Ideas Happen, will be published by Penguin in April 2010. Behance runs the Behance Creative Network, the 99% productivity think thank, the Action Method project management application, and the Creative Jobs List.

Join the conversation ( 1 )

• Jill Fehrenbacher 2 years 1 months and 29 days ago

  

  This concept is hands down the hardest thing I've had to grasp in business. As a designer by trade, I have a tendency to labor intensely over layout and copy to ensure everything is just right. As I continue to build my business and expand into new markets, I've found it challenging to break away from this habit - even in my work with developers and software architects. Hopefully, I'll soon learn the fine art of "acting without conviction."