Make sure a new product
has earned the right
to be built
Large companies are often exceptionally good at developing products. The harder question comes earlier: do we have enough evidence that we are developing the right one?
“The greater the next commitment, the stronger the evidence that should earn it. The danger is not necessarily poor Product development. It is starting Product development before the opportunity has sufficiently earned it.”
Iain Wallace
Founder, Traction Lab
Excellent teams can still struggle to determine what they need to know next
Product, Marketing, Research, Engineering and other specialists each see important parts of the opportunity. A seasoned external business perspective can help challenge what looks weakest, prioritise what matters most and align the different players around the evidence needed next.
Bring accelerator discipline into the uncertain front end
While product and market uncertainty is high, we bring disciplines developed through startup acceleration: expose the assumptions that matter, identify the users capable of providing meaningful evidence, and design the smallest credible test of the next critical assumption.
Then let the company do what it does best
As evidence strengthens, the company's existing Product, engineering and industrial capabilities can progressively take over. The objective isn't to make corporate teams behave like startups. It is to combine startup agility with the strengths already inside the company.
“Talking to customers is not enough. Teams can accumulate interviews, surveys, pain points and feature requests without becoming substantially more certain about what they should do.”
Iain Wallace
Traction Lab
Assumptions
Ranked by consequence
Users
Who can actually inform the question
Minimum test
Before expensive commitments
600+
Leaders & product teams coached
Corporate product and innovation teams we have worked with
Connect external evidence to the decisions it needs to carry
That can mean testing an important assumption without building the expected prototype at all.
What are we assuming?
Expose assumptions hidden inside apparently established plans. Reduce many possible objectives to the few that matter now — ranked by consequence and urgency.
What would constitute credible evidence?
Distinguish interesting customer information from evidence strong enough to influence a decision. Distinguish critical user needs from secondary ones.
What is the minimum test — and what does the result allow us to decide?
Devise faster, smaller and more informative experiments. Use external evidence to continue, change or stop. Progressively earn the right to invest more.
A discipline forged where teams cannot afford to spend months building first
Traction Lab does not replace the expertise already inside a company. It helps teams use that expertise differently while uncertainty is high — before applying the full power of the organisation to building what the evidence says deserves to exist.
Where Product owns new-product creation
Helping Product teams apply an accelerator-style validation discipline while the product and market are still highly uncertain.
Where Innovation develops opportunities first
Helping projects establish stronger evidence before substantial Product, engineering or industrial investment.
Where specialists work together
Providing a common discipline for prioritising uncertainty, testing assumptions and deciding what deserves to happen next.
Operator experience
Iain co-founded a technology company, took it through international product-market traction, and raised approximately €20m over seven years.
Better decisions, earlier
The aim is not more innovation activity. It is better new-product decisions — and over time, an internal capability rather than dependence on Traction Lab.
Both sides of the problem
Since then he has worked with 600+ startup founders and technology leaders, alongside corporate Product and innovation teams.
Creating a genuinely new product — but want to challenge its weakest assumptions first?
Let's talk before substantial resources are committed to an opportunity that has not yet earned them.
Talk to Traction LabOr reach out directly
Adresse
44, rue Laborde
75008 Paris, France