Spend Some Time On How To Disprove Your Hypotheses

November 4th, 2010 Sean Murphy

There is a strong temptation for founders to prioritize their efforts on the basis of  “What is the simplest thing we could do here to prove this hypothesis about our product or our business?”

It’s often more fruitful to consider what evidence would disprove your hypothesis and what is the simplest thing you could do to collect it?

Karl Popper calls this falsifiability and suggested that it was basis for any sound hypothesis.. You would be surprised how many product hypotheses cannot be disproved, in particular if you can’t define when you have disproved a key hypothesis you will ultimately accumulate enough “evidence” to convince yourself that you have proved it.

For more on this see “Paul Saffo Defines Forecasting as Strong Opinions Weakly Held“

Entry Filed under: Customer Development, skmurphy