The Right It

**Author:** Alberto Savoia **Estimated Reading Time:** 45 minutes

Why most new products fail regardless of how well they are built, and how to test your ideas cheaply and quickly before investing significant time and money. You will learn specific techniques for validating market demand, measuring real customer commitment, and making objective decisions about which ideas deserve your resources.

Entrepreneurs, product managers, designers, engineers, corporate innovators, and anyone who has ever poured their heart into building something only to watch the market ignore it. If you have ever wondered whether there is a better way to predict product success, this book is for you.

Every year, millions of people around the world pour their time, money, and energy into building new products. They work late nights, sacrifice weekends, and invest their savings. They believe deeply in their ideas. They are certain that once the world sees what they have created, success will follow. Most of them are wrong. The uncomfortable truth at the heart of Alberto Savoia's work is that the vast majority of new products fail in the marketplace. Not because they were poorly built. Not because the teams lacked talent or dedication. Not because the marketing was weak or the timing was slightly off. They fail because the fundamental premise was flawed from the beginning. The product was simply not something the market wanted. This is a difficult message to hear, especially in a culture that celebrates innovation and encourages entrepreneurs to follow their dreams. We are told that persistence is a virtue, that belief in oneself is essential, and that failure is just a stepping stone on the path to success. There is truth in all of these ideas, but they obscure a more fundamental reality: no amount of persistence, belief, or hard work can make a market want something it does not want. Savoia learned this lesson through decades of experience in Silicon Valley. As an engineering director at Google, he led the team that launched AdWords, one of the most successful products in the history of technology. He has also been involved in numerous projects that failed despite having brilliant teams and substantial resources. The contrast between these experiences taught him something profound: the difference between success and failure is rarely about execution quality. It is about whether you are building the right thing in the first place. The problem is that most people approach product development backwards. They start with an idea they love, convince themselves it will succeed, and then invest enormous resources in building it. Only after the product is complete do they discover whether the market actually wants it. By that point, it is usually too late to change course. Savoia proposes…