Don’t create quality with delusions! How to create products that produce real quality.

Up until now, people have thoroughly tried to improve the quality of products and services. This is natural. The higher the quality, the more favorably people receive services and products. Why do people pay with peace of mind? Why do they not hesitate to purchase? It is because the quality of the product or service is high and attractive. High quality is absolutely important when selling something.

However, in recent years, business methodologies have changed significantly. The market is flooded with similar products, and differentiation that ordinary people cannot clearly understand can no longer be called differentiation. For example, household appliances such as televisions, washing machines, and refrigerators. Various companies compete on their quality, but in reality, when a new model comes out, only a few people can tell at a glance what groundbreaking evolution it has achieved.

Products recently born in Japan are in a state where huge budgets are poured into products that lack what could be called differentiation, and the market is increasingly overflowing with similar products. In a market flooded with products that lack clear differentiation or unique appeal that makes them stand out, there is no longer any appeal unless something new is introduced. We fall into price competition and gradually become impoverished.

From an era when there were no goods, to an era when goods are saturated.

Immediately after the war, there was simply nothing. So, if you made it, it sold. Even without groundbreaking ideas or clear differentiation, in a society where current common household goods were in the diffusion stage, things sold like hotcakes.

But what about today? Basically, all common products have become widespread, and "things" themselves are no longer needed as much. What is needed in such an era is nothing less than "groundbreaking innovation that creates new values and ways of living." It's not an easily found value that comes from a sudden idea. Rather, there is no future unless we ourselves create new areas that no one else has thought of.

In the future, if you try to create a new service or product, you will need ideas from a completely different angle, not something where the market is already flooded with similar products.

Products with clear differentiation that are not an extension of the vectors we have followed so far, but rather one or two steps removed from them. Rather, products that create concepts that have never existed in the world before. Products that form new markets. And services are what are being sought.

There is no theory for new ideas.

Of course, there are no case studies for these new ideas. Since we are creating products that have never existed before, there are no reference materials in the past. Ways of working, concepts, norms – these must be created based on our own imagination of "this would be convenient."

Therefore, there will be an increasing number of cases where empirical rules and logic, such as "this happened in the past" or "this is what I was taught," will not be useful. Conversely, the challenge of stepping into areas where past common sense does not apply will become a path to success.

So, in such an era, how should services and products be created? Services that fully utilize one's imagination in a completely unknown domain. What path should we follow to create them?

It is necessary to improve quality with new methods.

Here, we return to the initial discussion. It is about quality. At the beginning, I talked about how improving quality is important, and by pursuing quality, people will pay more. That is a fundamental principle that cannot be replaced by anything. However, the method of improving quality is the problem.

Most people would say, "The quality hasn't reached the ideal yet!" or "There's still room for improvement!" They talk about ideals and try to reach that goal before releasing. This doesn't fit the modern method of service release. First of all, we need to consider what "quality" means here.

When you're about to step into an unknown territory, and there are no clear case studies so far, frankly, you can't predict how it will become popular. Certainly, you have your own ideals. The ideal that this service or product will be used in this way and grow in this way.

Ideals are incorporated into business plans and used for presentations to collaborators, shareholders, investors, or explanations to banks. However, in most cases, a business plan is merely a goal. It's a hope that things will proceed as planned.

In reality, those who have released services or products may have experienced that things don't proceed according to the business plan. Goals are revised many times while observing user requests and actual situations.

Immediate goals and objectives are fine-tuned at each meeting, and even fundamental parts of the service may need customization. This is because when launching something unprecedented, the picture you've drawn yourself is merely a delusion. It's an imagined hope.

No matter how much you research similar markets or follow similar precedents, in the end, you can only combine those examples and draw an ideal of what might happen.

Improving quality while facing users.

So what should we do? Usually, truly valuable "quality" is born while engaging with users. While interacting with users, countless unpredictable opinions emerge, such as "there was this opinion," "that feature is desired," "there was a request to improve this," and so on.

In worse cases, you might realize that no one wanted such a service, or that you were targeting an irrelevant area for society. There are also cases where you only felt you wanted it, but in reality, other things were sufficient substitutes. There might also be cases where it's socially, politically, religiously, or publicly unacceptable. It's impossible to predict all of these from the beginning and create a product or service.

And only after releasing it do you realize, "We thoroughly spent budget and time to improve quality, but it wasn't needed at all."

Even so, if you believe in it, there might be an opinion that you should continue. However, if the product or service was not fundamentally needed, it's important to gracefully stop. The reactions upon release and the results of its operation will surely tell you. And if there's no fundamental need, no matter how much you improve the quality, it won't sell.

A graceful change of direction can be a catalyst for growth.

In such cases, it's called a "pivot," where the business itself changes direction. If it's not in demand, not changing direction is a risk in itself. It's said that even for listed companies, things rarely proceed exactly as the entrepreneur initially envisioned.

Of course, it's better if things go according to the ideal. That would be lucky. However, realistically speaking, things proceeding exactly as initially planned is an overwhelmingly rare case.

In other words, if you spend budget and time on quality improvement without aligning with the actual market before release, that "quality" could end up being the entrepreneur's delusion and not matching the market. At that time, you would regret not having released it at an earlier stage and observed the situation.

Even if you have an MBA or excellent research skills, there is no 100% certainty in predicting the future. If it were possible, highly talented entrepreneurs worldwide would have evolved society at an even faster pace than they do now.

In other words, when starting a business, what's important is to "release it first." Release the service or product once it has taken some shape. Then, observe the market. Adjust based on how the market reacts and responds.

Instead of pursuing "quality" that exists only in your own mere delusion, pursue "quality" grasped from market reactions. In other words, quality itself can only be improved while in motion.

You can only pursue it from the start if you have an extraordinary amount of money.

If, despite this, the opinion arises to improve quality from the outset, it would likely be a large corporation with abundant funds or an organization capable of thorough research and development. If you try this at the venture, startup, or small-to-medium enterprise stage, you would need to go to investors or venture capitalists and undertake large-scale fundraising.

However, I believe both investors and venture capitalists would advise prioritizing release. Furthermore, pursuing quality first without an environment to raise such funds is completely reckless. You would only incur risks, and the possibility of failure would be greater.

However, some might think, "But how can I charge money if the quality isn't perfect from the start?" In fact, I think most people feel that way. Of course. You can't pay a high price for a service of mediocre quality.

In that case, why not sell it cheaply at first? While the quality isn't fully developed, lower the price to reduce the risk for users. Aim for users to think, 'It's great if I can use this service at this price!' Then, as quality improves, gradually create advanced plans with higher prices, or raise the price itself to constantly satisfy users. If you do that, things usually proceed smoothly.

The teachings of the world's most successful startup incubator.

There is the world's most successful startup incubator. It's called Y Combinator. It is the origin of what is known as the accelerator program. From Y Combinator, services like Dropbox and Airbnb, which now dominate the world, were once born.

There are several famous sayings discussed at Y Combinator, among them is "Release immediately." And they always speak from a user-centric perspective, saying "Talk to customers" and "Gather feedback from users and improve."

Not just at Y Combinator, "release immediately" and "continuously gather user feedback" are becoming common sense. When venturing into unknown territory, the word "quality" that an individual entrepreneur initially holds is nothing more than a mere delusion. If you are interested in the story of Y Combinator, please take a look at the slides below.

Summary

What do you think? This time, I've carefully conveyed the message of "releasing immediately and improving based on user feedback." For those who already recognize this from experience, it might seem like 'what's new?'

However, for those who found something new in this article, it might be quite impactful. Keep building, keep releasing, and keep trying. Surely, the breakthrough for your current situation lies in action.

By the way, the methodology of quickly developing and launching services and products, receiving feedback, and continuously improving is also known as Lean Startup. By rapidly repeating these processes, unnecessary steps are minimized to the extreme.

It seems that there are still few teams practicing this in Japan, but in reality, for those who cannot receive large investments and are starting with a small amount of capital, it can be said to be the most suitable method. Most teams should be able to use the Lean Startup method.

By the way, business is not just about creating unknown territories. However, in today's world, overflowing with all sorts of things, how many entrepreneurs would think, 'Let's start a business that's fine whether it exists or not'?

If it doesn't matter whether it exists or not, it could be argued that joining and helping another company's business would be much more beneficial to the world. Since you're making the bold decision to take risks, instead of competitors crushing each other, we want to take a step that can advance the world positively, even if just a little.