In years gone by, it was common for organisations to launch products without a thorough understanding of the customer.

Someone high enough in the organisation would have a bright spark, and suddenly it would be the priority. The approach even worked sometimes.

Thankfully, we have matured greatly. We’ve moved away from captain calls towards customer-led innovation inspired by a deep understanding and metrics driving decisions.

A key learning for many first-time product leaders is that ideas alone are worthless.

Steve Jobs summed it up, “there is a tremendous amount of craft between a great idea and a great product”.

Hollywood would have us believe that life-changing ideas pop into your head with a creative spark, and 90% of the work is complete once they arrive.

But this fantasy ignores the other critical factors which make an idea a success.

As the old recipe goes, Innovation is “1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration”. But it’s missing a giant part of the puzzle. The customer.

Building a product in a vacuum is a sure-fire recipe for failure.

You may have a million great ideas on paper. But finding a single customer problem worth solving is infinitely more valuable.