Harmful Perfectionism: Why Do You Need to Stop Overthinking Your Hardware Product

Each entrepreneur values its product and dreams for it to be perfect. For this reason, many entrepreneurs often spend months and even years mentally specifying their product and thinking about each detail and feature. However, this perfectionism is harmful and if you want your product to be successful – stop overthinking it! Here are some reasons why.

Prioritize the customer

Envisioning your product is fun and interesting, but it should not be a priority. Instead, prioritize your customers. Think about your product from another perspective: it is developed for customers, to solve their particular problems. So, your product must be oriented towards customers, and when you overfocus on the product you will probably make a lot of wrong assumptions about your customers’ needs. You should stop thinking about a perfect product and instead involve your customers in the development process. Your final product should be defined by customers, not your perfectionism. Customers can be engaged in the development process in various ways. 

For example, the most popular way to collect feedback from real people is to conduct simple A/B testing of a potential product feature among your online audience. 

Early customer feedback can also be received from surveys about your product and its features. However, keep in mind that there can be a difference between survey results and the actual purchase intentions of customers. Finally, you can just talk to your potential customers about your product and the problem it is expected to solve. Thus, you will gain valuable feedback and your chances of success will increase. 

Consider time limits

Hardware development and electronic design is an extremely innovative industry with new products emerging regularly, and you should consider this when you specify your product. The more time you spend on perfectionism, the more chances that other companies will realize your idea or your hardware product will become unnecessary due to various technological advancements. It doesn’t mean that you should realize your idea immediately without estimations, market research and business plan. However, keep in mind that the more you overthink your product, the more time you lose. 

Focus on your company

Another aspect you should focus on instead of overthinking your hardware product is your company. Naturally, the product is important, but in the long run, you expect to get profits from your company and its future projects. So, do not focus on your product solely, instead, build a powerful hardware company with experienced employees. You cannot build such a company on the basis of a single successful product. Long-term success requires work on the development of innovative new products, marketing, sales, manufacturing, financing, customer support, intellectual property protection and other aspects of the hardware development business.

As you see, your success is not based on your product solely. So, focus on your customers to build a product that will solve their problems, and use the knowledge and experience you have gained during the development process to create new successful products. Thus, you can build a successful profitable hardware development company. You can find more information about electronic design here.