Open to Interpretation
by Vijay Anand
If you are an entrepreneur, you have probably glanced through datasets, and reports to build a case for the problem you are trying to solve. There is a bit of a danger in it, if you do not get the context behind those numbers though.
1. Numbers have a tendency to Skew / Average reality.
Talk to two people who have very very different needs, and you do your usual analysis and do the average. Build a product and you will realize that neither of them want it now. It solves neither one’s problem in the right / perfect manner.
2. Without Context, Information is dangerous.
Our mind in a lot of ways loves to work backwards. We come up with a theory and then try to justify it with some statement made somewhere, and Google is the perfect friend to help make that case for you. You can most probably find a supporting statement for any positional stand on the web – if luck has it, even by some guy who lived in the 14th century.
3. Data can often can go both ways – sometimes meaning multiple things.
Let me quote an example. As part of my usual routine you login into facebook and you see a note by a good friend which says “ Live-In relationships decrease in economic prosperity and vice versa. The % of live in’s have jumped since 2008 with the economic slump.”
My mind jumps to the following conclusions, and rather quickly because the said friend is reputable and hence I dont even ask for the source of this data. Secondly, if you didnt hear about this similar context / conversation before, one would believe this to be true. Here how interpretation works:
Scenario 1: I believe that love is a concept of the stupor and people are always rational and moving towards financial efficiency, in which case, the above said statement strenghthens my case.
Scenario 2: If you talk to any matrimonial site owner, they’ll tell you that during times of economic slumps, people actually get more active on a site. More weddings happen, and ten months later, more babies are born. – Could it be that we are all getting more and more career driven (Gen Y tendency) and ignoring relationships, and a “economic slump” actually gives us the time and reality check to focus on relationships, build, and maybe live-ins and weddings are the much due response thats delayed and finally happening?
Truth is, we’d never know. And you also realize that this conclusion, as persuasive as it is, is also an “average” – a summary. There WILL be people who are doing it for love, people doing it for economical reasons, the darn luck ones doing it for both, and all sorts of variations in between.
Market analysis, isn’t as easy as it sounds does it. We need to acknowledge that there are strands of target groups, and if you are really targeting a specific population, dig deeper till you get the finest amount of detail, to understand motives, context and possible economic behavior. If you do, you might find some rather – unshocking, and predictable results, when you do do your pilot run, and most of all your depiction of ideal customer will actually be succinct with clarity.
All these points are quite valid. I loved the way you made your point clear with the matrimony example. The problem with us entrepreneurs is that we tend to assume. Assumptions like – If this is true in x case then most likely in smaller set of x the same should apply. I hope I have understood the problem right
Well, anyways if that is so, then we make terrible mistakes by making assumptions. Like you said the only solution hence is to dig deeper and make several passes before we decide on our conclusions. If I have understood the context right, I must add – this is simply a superb post. Hope more people read this.
“Do the doable, then push it” is the refrain of the entrepreneur… One can never wait to get all the data assembled and then proceed to decide on it. There is no such thing as “complete information” because if one has it, then it is no problem left to solve. Entrepreneurs thrive on chaos, not on clarity… !!!