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A colleague pointed me towards this article in the Int’l Herald Tribune looking for reasons why company’s product design efforts so often go bad: Why the overwhelming number of design flops?.

It got me thinking… is product design a science or a crapshoot? If you go looking, there is no shortage of ‘how-to’ guides. And clearly, there are a lot of useful tips you can pick up from these sources. But even if you follow all of the best practices, the reality is that you still have very low probability of actually scoring big with anything you release. Maybe you can maximize your chances of success, but in the end, it’s still a crapshoot because so many factors that go into success are totally out of your control. The future, for example, and all the unexpected twists and turns it brings. 

With all this in mind, I propose my own 3 rules for product succe$$:

1. It has to do what it’s supposed to do.
   Your perpetual motion machine has to remain in motion. Perpetually.
2. ‘What it’s supposed to do’ must be important to enough buyers to translate into big potential revenue.
   (Your sure-fire cure for schizophrenia in red-headed triplets may work, but there may not be enough buyers to make you rich).
3. It has to be different from whatever everybody else is selling.
   Unless you have a billion dollars for advertising, the best way to stand out from the crowd is to do whatever all your competitors are NOT doing. They zig, you zag.

I’ve developed these 3 rules over the course of minutes and minutes of mind-bending ruminations. Follow them, and I guarantee success. (No guarantee implied, try at your own risk.)