One of the easiest things to become enthusiastic about is a good product.
You see something clever.
It solves a genuine technical problem.
It's well engineered.
Perhaps it's successful somewhere else.
And before long, the conversation moves from:
"That's a good product."
to:
"We should sell this here."
There's nothing wrong with enthusiasm.
In fact, enthusiasm is often what gets an opportunity moving.
But there is an important question between those two statements:
"Is there actually a market opportunity?"
They aren't the same thing.
Start with the customer, not the product.
Manufacturers understandably know their products extremely well.
They know what the product does, why it was developed and how it compares technically with alternatives.
But customers don't necessarily look at the market from the same perspective.
A customer may be asking:
What problem does this solve for me?
Is that problem important enough for me to change what I'm currently doing?
What will it cost?
Will it work with what I already have?
Can my people use it?
Can somebody support it?
Is it approved for use here?
Why should I take the risk of changing?
Those questions can be much more important than whether the product is technically superior.
That's why investigating an opportunity should begin with understanding the market in which the product has to operate.
A market is more than a collection of potential customers.
It's tempting to estimate an opportunity by counting.
There are this many hospitals.
This many industrial facilities.
This many potential users.
This many pieces of existing equipment.
Multiply one number by another and suddenly there's a very impressive market opportunity.
Perhaps.
But a theoretical market and an accessible market are very different things.
Before those numbers become meaningful, we need to understand how purchasing decisions are actually made.
Who specifies the product?
Who buys it?
Who uses it?
Who maintains it?
Who approves it?
Who pays for it?
They may all be different people or organisations.
And they may value completely different things.
What happens today?
This is one of the questions I find most useful when looking at a new opportunity.
Not:
"Why would somebody buy this?"
But:
"What are they doing now?"
If the proposed product solves a problem, the market is probably already dealing with that problem somehow.
Perhaps customers use another product.
Perhaps they use a different process.
Perhaps they tolerate the problem.
Perhaps they have developed a workaround.
Or perhaps the problem isn't sufficiently important to them to justify doing anything at all.
Understanding the existing behaviour gives us something extremely valuable: a reference point.
The real competition isn't always another manufacturer's product.
Sometimes the competition is:
"We've always done it this way."
Better isn't always enough.
A new product may genuinely be better.
More efficient.
More accurate.
Easier to use.
More reliable.
Technically more sophisticated.
But being better in one dimension doesn't automatically create a reason to change.
Changing products can introduce costs and risks that aren't obvious when looking at the product itself.
Training may be required.
Existing equipment may need modification.
Procedures may need to change.
New spare parts may be required.
Service capability may need to be established.
Contracts may already be in place.
Customers may have standardised equipment across multiple sites.
Regulatory approvals may be required.
Procurement arrangements may favour established suppliers.
So another useful question is:
"Is the improvement valuable enough to justify changing?"
That's a much harder question than asking whether the new product is better.
The product may need to fit the market — not the other way around.
Products developed for one market don't necessarily transfer directly into another.
Different countries and industries can have different standards, regulations, purchasing structures, technical practices, service expectations and customer preferences.
Even terminology can be different.
That doesn't necessarily mean the opportunity isn't viable.
It may mean the product, commercial model or route to market needs to change.
Perhaps the product requires modification.
Perhaps additional certification is needed.
Perhaps the right approach is distribution rather than direct sales.
Perhaps local technical support matters more than expected.
Perhaps customers want a service rather than simply a product.
Perhaps the opportunity exists in a different application from the one originally envisaged.
This is where curiosity becomes commercially useful.
Instead of asking:
"How do we sell this product?"
it can be much more productive to ask:
"Where does this product genuinely create value?"
The answers aren't necessarily the same.
Regulation can change the opportunity.
In technical and regulated markets, commercial assessment and regulatory assessment can't always be separated.
A product can be technically excellent and still face significant barriers to market entry.
The applicable requirements may affect:
- whether the product can legally be supplied;
- how it needs to be tested or certified;
- who can install or service it;
- what claims can be made about it;
- what documentation is required;
- how it must integrate with existing systems; and
- the cost and time required to enter the market.
But regulation isn't always simply a barrier.
Sometimes understanding the requirements properly reveals an opportunity that wasn't obvious initially.
The important thing is not to assume either outcome.
Find out.
Talk to the people who actually know.
Desk research has enormous value.
Standards, regulations, market data, competitor information and published research can answer many questions.
But eventually, somebody has to talk to the market.
And preferably not only to people who are likely to agree with the original idea.
Talk to customers.
Talk to users.
Talk to technical people.
Talk to service organisations.
Talk to distributors.
Talk to people who specify the equipment.
Talk to people who have to live with it after it's installed.
Sometimes one conversation with somebody who works with the problem every day can challenge an assumption that looked perfectly reasonable on paper.
That's not a failure of the research.
That's exactly what the research is supposed to discover.
Don't ask people to confirm your idea.
There's a subtle trap in market investigation.
If we believe we've found a good opportunity, it's very easy to ask questions designed to confirm it.
"Would you be interested in a product that does this?"
The answer might be yes.
But that doesn't necessarily mean they'll buy it.
A more revealing conversation might explore:
What are you using now?
What works well about it?
What doesn't?
What causes you problems?
How significant are those problems?
What would make you change?
Who would need to approve that change?
What would stop you?
Those questions investigate the customer's world rather than asking the customer to validate ours.
That's an important distinction.
Follow unexpected answers.
Sometimes the most valuable part of investigating an opportunity is discovering something you weren't looking for.
You may begin researching one application and discover another.
A conversation about a product may reveal a service problem.
A regulatory question may uncover an overlooked market requirement.
A customer may value something completely different from what the manufacturer expected.
Or several apparently unrelated conversations may reveal the same recurring problem.
That's where staying open to alternative possibilities matters.
Research shouldn't just answer the questions we started with.
It should allow us to recognise better questions as they emerge.
An opportunity is a system.
Eventually, the pieces need to work together.
The product needs to solve something worthwhile.
The customer needs to value the solution.
The technical requirements need to be achievable.
The regulatory pathway needs to be understood.
The route to market needs to make sense.
The service and support model needs to work.
And the commercial model needs to produce an acceptable outcome for everyone involved.
Weakness in one area doesn't automatically kill an opportunity.
Sometimes it can be addressed.
But ignoring it doesn't make it disappear either.
That's why market development often requires looking across disciplines rather than examining each one in isolation.
Sometimes the answer should be no.
This is an important part of opportunity assessment.
Not every good idea should become a business.
Not every good product belongs in every market.
And not every apparent opportunity survives investigation.
Sometimes the numbers don't work.
Sometimes the regulatory pathway is disproportionate to the opportunity.
Sometimes customers simply don't care enough about the problem.
Sometimes an established solution is already good enough.
Sometimes the timing is wrong.
Finding that out before making a significant investment is a useful result.
The purpose of investigating an opportunity isn't to prove that it exists.
It's to find out whether it does.
And sometimes the opportunity isn't where you expected it.
The opposite can happen too.
Investigation may reveal that the original assumption was wrong — but something else is more interesting.
Perhaps a different customer group has the stronger need.
Perhaps the real value isn't the product but the service around it.
Perhaps a different commercial model removes a barrier.
Perhaps local capability creates an advantage that wasn't part of the original thinking.
Perhaps the product solves a problem nobody initially recognised as the opportunity.
This is why I don't think scepticism and optimism are opposites.
Good investigation needs both.
Be sceptical enough to challenge the assumptions.
Be optimistic enough to keep exploring what else might be possible.
Understand the opportunity before building the business around it.
A good product deserves enthusiasm.
But enthusiasm shouldn't replace investigation.
Understand the customer.
Understand what happens today.
Understand why somebody would change.
Understand the technical and regulatory environment.
Understand how the product would actually reach and be supported in the market.
Challenge the assumptions.
Talk to people who know things you don't.
And stay open to answers you weren't expecting.
Then make the decision.
Sometimes that decision will be:
"There's a real opportunity here."
Sometimes:
"There's an opportunity, but it's different from the one we originally imagined."
And sometimes:
"This doesn't stack up."
All three are useful outcomes.
Because the objective isn't to make every opportunity work.
It's to understand it well enough to know which opportunities are worth pursuing.