The Three Steps to Create Great Value Communications Step 1: Develop Crystal-Clear Benefit Statements—Not Feature Descriptions

New products fail for many reasons. But the root of all innovation evil—what billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk would call the set of “first principles”—is the failure to put the customer's willingness to pay for a new product at the very core of product design.

Paid pilots: Instead of giving the product to beta-testers for free, LinkedIn typically goes to market and sells the beta version of the product. Why? It provides another layer of validation for the monetizing potential of the new service based on the value delivered. In the words of Josh Gold, “Our beta users have skin in the game by actually payi

In this book, we have boiled these secrets down into the following nine new rules for innovation success. The rules are contrary to what most executives have learned about product development: Have the “willingness to pay” talk with customers early in the product development process. If you don't do it early, you won't be able to prioritize the pro

Understanding if customers are willing to pay for your invention, before you commit too many resources to building and launching it, will dramatically increase your likelihood of success. By designing your product around a price, your innovations will stand a far greater chance of surviving and thriving. Figuring how much customers will pay for you

Myth #5: Until the business knows precisely what it's building, it cannot possibly assess what it is worth.

The freemium model is definitely not right for everyone. It only works if you have a very low cost of production (preferably no production costs at all) and minimal fixed costs that can and will be offset by the generally smaller percentage of paying customers.

Building Block #4: Develop Principles for Reaction

How do such undead products make it to market? They happen when their proponents wildly overstate the customer appeal and don't segment the customer base effectively. Had these firms asked customers what they'd be willing to pay for their inventions before drafting the engineering plans, and had they identified the market size by segment and who wo