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I’ve read “The right it - Alberto Savoia”, this is a summary that I made of the book (I used AI to make it more readable )

Review of The Right It by Alberto Savoia
In The Right It, Alberto Savoia claims that the probability of a new product failing in the market is around 90%. You can build something perfectly — but that doesn’t mean it’s the right product for the market.

To reduce the chance of failure, Savoia proposes adding an extra step before building a prototype or minimum viable product. He calls this step pretotyping — creating a very quick, low-cost test of your idea to check if there’s genuine market interest. A pretotyping experiment should be designed and executed in hours or days, not weeks or months.

Some pretotyping techniques described in the book include:

• Mechanical Turk – A human secretly performs the work that the product would do.
• Pinocchio – A non-functional mock-up that you pretend works like the real product.
• Fake Door – Advertise or announce your product and see how many people “knock” (click, sign up, etc.).
• Facade – Make it look like the product exists (e.g., a convincing shop front or website) without actually building it.
• YouTube – Create a short video showing how the product would work.
• One-Night Stand – Offer the product or service for a very short period to gauge demand.
• The Infiltrator – Place your product into a real environment without fanfare and observe reactions.
• Relabel – Take an existing product and rebrand it to test a new market or positioning.

Savoia emphasizes that you should gather your own data through pretotyping. He introduces the “Skin-in-the-Game” caliper: positive feedback only counts if the potential customer gives you something of value — such as an email address, phone number, deposit, or purchase. Compliments and promises don’t count as validation.

If you decide to start with a new idea, Savoia suggests this plan:

1. Start with your idea.
2. Identify a clear, sharp Market Engagement Hypothesis (MEH).
3. Turn the MEH into a “say-it-with-numbers” XYZ hypothesis with specific, measurable targets (e.g., “At least X% of Y will Z”).
4. Break this into smaller, easy-to-test xyz hypotheses.
5. Use pretotyping techniques to run experiments and collect your own data.
6. Use the Right It Meter with the Skin-in-the-Game caliper to analyze results.
7. Decide on the next step for your idea: Go for it, drop it, or tweak it.

The author claims that by applying these methods, you can dramatically reduce the likelihood of failure and increase your chances of building “The Right It.”

This book has taught me a lot. I'm always with my head in solutions and technologies because that's what I'm comfortable with. While market research has not been my strong point. That is going to change in the future.

 

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