Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Everyone wants a million-dollar idea, but it takes more than just imagination to turn brainwaves into a bankroll — it helps to have a proven method. Like most kids, I learned the scientific method in school, so, the first time I wanted to start a business, I went with an approach I knew: I tested my business hypothesis, analyzed my results and revised until I had arrived at a solution. In the process, I learned to love solving business challenges through product innovation, which led me to start Influence Mobile, develop our flagship product and transform a simple idea into millions.
As a leader, I still use that same scientific approach for innovative product development. To be competitive, we always need to be innovating, which means staying on the lookout for new problems to solve. Such innovative solutions often ask us to make improvements we’ve never attempted, inviting questions we may not know how to answer. Even when approaching the unknown, we always have a tool to draw conclusions for better-informed decision-making — the scientific method.
Related: The Scientific Method for Entrepreneurs: 6 Steps to Long-Term Success
Observe, question and hypothesize
To fully realize a million-dollar idea, start with a clear goal in mind. Finding that initial spark often comes through its own scientific process: observing a problem to be solved and asking questions about the best way to solve it. At our company, we recently observed that push messages were a major revenue driver and asked ourselves, “How can we engage long-term players of our app and increase their acceptance of push messages and retention?” Our traditional strategy had centered on early engagement and Day 1 ROAS, so this marked our first major investment in extending the engagement window.
To navigate this new terrain, we let the scientific method be our guide: We observed end-user behavior and preferences, compared that to past experiences and asked how to drive engagement based on that data. Using our market knowledge and what we know about our users, we hypothesized that people would respond well to a game with monthly collect-and-win opportunities and attractive giveaways. We also came up with several other hypotheses, but when we held them up against our existing data, we went with the one that seemed to most effectively bring us toward a solution.
Related: How Do You Bring Innovation to Market?
Experiment and refine
To transform a product hypothesis into a revenue stream, we need to test and refine it into its most effective form. Once we had developed our game and the aspects we predicted users would enjoy, we built a small prototype and shared it with a few hundred players. Again, we observed their behavior and asked more questions: How did they engage with the game? How many push notifications did they accept?
Remarkably, 90% of players enabled push notifications and 6 out of 10 players opted to receive the maximum of 10 daily. Nearly 40% of players who traded game pieces chose to haggle rather than have trades conducted automatically. This high acceptance of push messages and community engagement added new challenges for us to address, but the initial feedback was promising.
Still, no product is perfect right out of the gate. This is why the scientific method calls for continuous experimentation. In product development, this means quick, frequent tests to confirm our theories or garner immediate feedback to refine the approach. After our initial testing, we rolled out the game to increasingly larger groups, surveyed players and identified areas for improvement. Through user feedback and our own experiences, we determined that more gameplay options would cater to different types of players and refined our product to meet more user needs.
Related: The Ten Commandments Of Business Innovation
Analyze data and iterate improvements
With every test comes more data to refine further, each iteration bringing that initial idea closer to a bankroll-worthy product. Observe and identify key metrics that would indicate the product’s success. Then, ask questions: How do we drive those metrics? Who are the right partners? What is the smallest version we can use to test? Start as broad as possible and then refine with each of many iterations.
For us, push message acceptance directly impacted user engagement, so we observed and asked questions: Did the players engage with the game as expected? Did they accept more push notifications? What did the data tell us about their preferences? We brought in an experienced game development firm, conducted surveys, and analyzed player behavior, engagement and push message acceptance both before and after launching the game. Our hypothesis was on the right track, but by analyzing the data and honing in on this metric, we revealed what was working alongside targeted areas for improvement.
Draw conclusions, launch and learn
After multiple rounds of testing and refining, we can draw conclusions about the best product to launch that will most likely yield million-dollar success. For our game, we concluded that competitive gameplay and personalized options would drive long-term engagement and push notification acceptance. So, we launched our Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to a larger audience, evaluating new data and uncovering more problems. Again, we turned to the scientific method to observe, question, hypothesize, test and refine our biggest opportunities for improvement.
Early feedback gave us confidence, but we didn’t stop there. To truly measure retention and engagement is a long-funnel event. The MVP phase taught us the impact of scale in real-time, but the product is still in the very early stages even after launching to tens of thousands of players. Much like our flagship app, which took years of testing and optimization to scale past a hundred million in revenue, we will continue to gather data and refine with further improvements to ensure our game stays engaging and relevant.
The principles of the scientific method serve as a timeless guide to solving problems and innovating ideas. This iterative process takes ideas through discovery and improvement and turns them into sustained growth and success. Whether developing a new app, launching a product or improving an existing service, the scientific method offers a structured process anyone can apply to navigate innovation with greater confidence.