Alberto Savoia. The Right It: Why So Many Ideas Fail and How to Make Sure Yours Succeed. Harper One. New York. 2019.

Contents

Prelude

Book Overview

Part I: Hard Facts

• 1. The Law of Market Failure
  • Failure Is Not an Option-Not!
    • Failure is the most likely outcome.
  • The Law of Market Failure
    • Most new products will fail in the market.
    • They will fail even if competently executed.
  • Market Failure and Success Defined
  • Market Failure Statistics

  • The Success Equation

  • Too Smart to Fail?
  • Failophobia
  • FLOP
    • Failure due to Launch
    • Failure due to Operations
    • Failure due to Premise
  • Make sure you are building The Right It before you build it right.
• 1. The Right It
  • The Wrong It
  • Thoughtland
  • HOCUS-POCUS FOCUS Groups
  • The FOUR Trolls of Thoughtland
    • The Lost-In-Translation Problem
    • The Prediction Problem
    • The Skin-in-the-Game Problem
    • The Confirmation-Bias Problem
    • When the Trolls Team Up
  • Thoughtland and False Positives
  • Thoughtland and False Negatives
  • Escape from Thoughtland
• 1. Data Beats Opinions
  • Data
    • Freshness
    • Strong relevance
    • Known provenance
    • Statistical significance
  • Other People's Data
  • You Must Get Your Own DAta
  • Quick Recap

Part II: Sharp Tools

• 1. Thinking Tools
  • Market Engagement Hypothesis
  • Say It with Numbers
    • XYZ Hypothesis
    • At Least X% of Y Will Z
    • Venture into the Unknown
    • XYZ Hypothesis Examples
  • Hypozooming
    • Target Zooming Y -> y
• 1. Pretotyping Tools
  • The IBM Speech-to-Text Example
  • Pretotyping
  • In Search of Pretotypes
  • The Mechanical Turk Pretotype
    • Example: Fold4U
  • The Pinocchio Pretotype
    • Example: The PalmPilot
    • You Say Proto, I Say Preto
    • Example: Smart Horn
    • Example:Smart Speaker, or Voice-Controlled Assistant
  • The Fake Door Prototype
    • Example: Antonia's Antique Bookstore
    • Example: A Guide to Squirrel Watching
    • More on the Ethics of Fake Pretotypes
  • The Facade Pretotype
    • Example: CarsDirect
    • Example: Antonia's Antique Bookstore Revisited
  • The YouTube Pretotype
    • Example: Google Glass Explorer Edition
    • Example: The Smart Horn Revisited
    • Example: The Portable Pollution Sensor Revisited
    • Example: FeeBird
    • Return on Pretotype Investment
  • The One-Night Stand Pretotype
    • Example: Virgin Airlines
    • Example: Airbnb
    • Example:Tesla's Pop-Up Showroom
    • Test a Little Before You Invest a Lot
  • The Infiltrator Pretotype
    • Example: Walhub
  • The Relabel Pretotype
    • Example: Second-Day Sushi
    • Example: Book Covers
  • Pretotyping Variations and Combinations
    • Example: The Live Demo Pretotype
    • Example: The Morsel Pretotype
  • What Makes a Pretotype a Pretotype
• 1. Analysis Tools
  • The Skin-in-the-Game Caliper
    • Example: The Tortell-o-matic
    • Example: A Tale of Two Teams
  • The TRI Meter
    • Example: Second-Day Sushi
    • How Much Data Do You Need?
    • Interpreting the TRI Meter

Part III: Plastic Tactics

• 1. Tactics Toolkit
  • Tactic 1: Think Globally, Test Locally
    • Say It with Numbers: Distance to Data
  • Tactic 2: Testing Now Beats Testing Later
    • Say It with Numbers: Hours to Data
  • Tactic 3: Think Cheap, Cheaper, Cheapest
    • Say It with Numbers: Dollars to Data
  • Tactic 4: Tweak It and Flip It Before You Quit It
    • Tweaks Beat Pivots
• 1. Complete Example: BusU
  • Thinking Clearly About Our Idea
    • The Original Idea
    • Market Engagement Hypothesis
    • XYZ Hypothesis
    • From XYZ to xyz
  • Time to Test
    • Choosing Our First Pretotype
    • Executing Our First Pretotyping Experiment
  • Analyzing and Iterating
  • A Lucky Break
    • From New Data to New Decisions
    • What's Next?
  • A Few Notes About the BusU Example
• 1. Final Words

  • The Right It: A Recap

    • A Review of the Hard Facts
    • A Review of the Sharp Tools
    • A Review of the Plastic Tactics
    • There Are No Guarantees
  • What to Build?
    • Make Sure It's The Right It for You
    • Make Sure It's The Right It for the World
    • Go for the Right Right It

Acknowledgments

Glossary