The iconic line, "If you build it, they will come," from the movie Field of Dreams, evokes a powerful, almost romantic, ideal of creation. It suggests that sheer brilliance, passion, or even a heartfelt vision for a product is enough to guarantee its success. That if you simply manifest your idea into reality, customers will magically appear, eager to embrace what you've created.
While this makes for fantastic cinema, it's a profound and dangerously misleading fallacy in the real world of product development, business strategy, and innovation. For digital products, physical goods, or even new services, blindly adhering to this mantra is a fast track to wasted resources, dashed hopes, and often, outright failure.
In the movie, Kevin Costner's character builds a baseball field in an isolated cornfield, a singular, unique endeavor. The reality of today's market couldn't be more different. We live in an incredibly crowded, noisy, and competitive landscape. For almost any product or service you can conceive, there are already dozens, if not hundreds, of alternatives vying for a customer's attention, time, and money.
Simply building something, no matter how clever or well-intentioned, doesn't guarantee visibility. Without a clear strategy for differentiation, marketing, and distribution, your meticulously crafted product risks becoming just another anonymous offering in a sea of options, invisible to the very audience you hoped to attract.
The "If you build it" mindset often leads to a solution-first approach. You have a brilliant idea for an app feature, a groundbreaking piece of hardware, or a novel service, and then you try to find a problem it can solve. This puts the cart before the horse.
Successful products emerge from a problem-first approach. They start with a deep, empathetic understanding of a user's pain point, an unmet need, or a frustrated desire. Customers don't buy products because they're beautifully engineered; they buy solutions to problems they acutely feel. If your creation doesn't effectively address a genuine, pressing need, its existence alone won't compel anyone to "come."
Perhaps the most insidious aspect of this fallacy is its neglect of business fundamentals. A product can indeed be "loveable." It might garner rave reviews from early adopters, impress critics with its elegant design, or even solve a niche problem brilliantly. But can that love translate into a sustainable business?
Many a product has been adored by its users but failed because it couldn't answer these critical questions positively. A "loveable" product without a viable business model is, sadly, just an expensive hobby.
The romantic ideal of "they will come" utterly ignores the realities of how products reach their audience. Building a product is only the first step. The next, equally crucial steps involve:
These are the domains of marketing, sales, and distribution – vital functions that require strategy, effort, and investment. A product, no matter how revolutionary, will languish in obscurity if it's not effectively brought to market.
Instead of blind faith, successful product development hinges on Product Discovery. This is a continuous, iterative process that systematically de-risks product investments by validating critical assumptions before committing significant resources. It involves:
This approach prioritizes learning over building. It encourages "killing ideas early" that don't demonstrate clear desirability or viability, saving immense time and money that would otherwise be spent on products destined for obscurity or unprofitability.
In essence, the "If you build it, they will come" fallacy is a dangerous relic. Modern product success isn't about blind creation; it's about strategic discovery, meticulous validation, and a clear understanding that a product must serve both its users and the business's bottom line.