The Final Element of the Sails Framework: Implementability

The Sails framework: we have covered essential demand, scalability, a profitable business model, and a large market. The last element is Implementability. Make sure your startup idea can be implemented under present conditions. Many entrepreneurs overlook this element, discovering halfway through a project that their idea rests on a false premise. Why do so many get implementability wrong? If they knew for certain that an idea could not be implemented, they would not pursue it. The likely root cause is that they did not know beforehand that it was unworkable. That is the logical explanation. In fact, the simpler a question, the more misleading and deceptive it can be. A project’s “implementability” looks easy to understand but is difficult to judge. No clear definition draws a precise line between what is and is not feasible. An idea impossible three years ago may work today. Team A may fail where team B succeeds easily. How can we distinguish what can be implemented? The author offers three suggestions for thinking carefully about your startup idea’s implementability. First, anything plainly inconsistent with accepted laws and theorems is fundamentally unworkable. A startup’s project cannot violate basic laws and theorems. If it addresses a pain point in biological science, for example, the entire product-development process must conform to biology’s fundamental principles. A traditional company’s transformation requires deep industry analysis and an understanding of industry patterns to improve its chances. Likewise, if you manufacture paragliders, their design must follow aerodynamic principles or fail. These universal laws and theorems cannot be violated. No amount of resources or expert effort can create a “perpetual-motion machine.” Such principles form a nonnegotiable baseline for implementability. At the same time, innovation requires a team that can break old thinking. Breakthrough innovations cannot grow within the original frame of thought. They often emerge when people seek better approaches to existing solutions. Entrepreneurs need breakthrough thinking to innovate and create an environment conducive to it. Founders must distinguish immutable principles from outdated rules that can be broken. Using the former to break the latter is an important means of innovation. Second, if an activity is geographically constrained, your idea cannot conflict with the mainstream cultures of the regions involved. Even entirely online startups face geographic constraints. Anyone may download and access your app, but differing regional usage habits deserve attention and respect. Many nationwide or global internet platforms therefore study basic human needs, designing features and attributes around highly consistent user needs. Social apps, for example, should offer multiple ways to express ideas rather than require one particular language. A social platform focused on a region such as the Middle East or Latin America, by contrast, must support the relevant language inputs. Online-to-offline (O2O) startups must be especially respectful of regional cultural and behavioral differences, or they cannot operate smoothly. Third, if your proposition requires changing target users’ habits or teaching them new skills, make special psychological and financial preparations. Educating a market is extremely difficult and costly. Success can, of course, create a powerful competitive barrier. Many innovations require changes in users’ habits, or even new skills, however hard founders try to avoid that. Mobile-internet projects, for example, require users to learn to shop, order, and rent cars on phones. In the early mobile-internet period, consulting firms encountered many startups that failed because they could not solve the problem of getting users accustomed to scanning QR codes to pay. Startups in this situation need special psychological and financial preparation. Familiarity with a new method must not make you overlook the difficulty of changing users’ habits. Underestimating it will lead to setbacks. But excellent products that gradually change habits can also deliver major achievements. Cultivating the market becomes especially necessary. The iPhone, for example, changed how many people used phones, to the point that people accustomed to iOS find it hard to switch suddenly to Android. This gave Apple a stable user base and built a competitive barrier. Otherwise, free Android software could easily have taken iOS’s market. To judge implementability clearly, entrepreneurs must observe carefully, think deeply, and gather more information. Talk with experienced people around you as well and see whether they can offer objective views on your idea’s feasibility. Before that, develop your own view, then critically assess what to take from others’ advice. Be neither stubborn nor easily swayed. #董坤創業要過哪些坎 (Dong Kun: the hurdles entrepreneurs must overcome)