40. Concluding Remarks

When I started this book, I firmly believed it was about nailing jelly to the wall. I finish this book 10 years later realising the inadequacy of this metaphor when talking about new product definition. If you attempt to nail jelly to the wall you end up with a lot of nails randomly covering the wall and a pool of jelly on the floor. This image of new product definition as a business discipline is not one I would wish to promote.

Yesterday I completed the book except for 2 things that had bothered me on and off for the last 10 years. I had no conclusion and the working title for the book, "New Product Definition" lacked imagination and achieved few of the qualites I have alluded to myself in the section on naming.

My little son woke me at 2.30 am this morning. By 4am I had a new title and by 5am the conclusion was worked out in my head. To my frustration I have had to commit my day to filling out my Tax Reurn but now I can relate to you what early morming imagineering has achieved.

This book is henceforth to be known by the title "Capturing Your Dragon", but why that title? Everyone knows that a Dragon is a mythical and magical creature, known and unknown at the same time. It therefore makes a good metaphor for the new product concept.

We all have a mental picture of a Dragon whether it be Pete's Dragon, the Chinese New Year festival dragon, St George and the Dragon or the mechanical dragon of the James Bond movie. If I asked 10 people in a room to draw and describe a dragon I would get 10 different answers, but all would have a common set of attributes - in particular a fiery breath. If however I asked what the weight of a dragon was, or what the temperature of its breath was or whether it was cold or warm blooded I would get some distinctly different answers. This is because a dragon is a concept in which we have a shared but limited understanding.

So too, with a new product concept. Its something we can all subscribe to or understand at a certain level but the reality of the detail is missing. Its that detail that needs to be captured if you are going to realise the product.

So what do you have to do to capture a dragon. Like all good concepts it can disappear, walk through walls, generate a fiery breath with cold blood and so on, particularly if you are talking about 10 different people's Dragons. No two dragons will be capable of doing the same thing. So to capture a dragon you have to capture your particular dragon.

You do that by creating barriers and constraints through which your dragon cannot pass. All other dragons will find a loop hole and disappear, but yours, because you are concentrating on capturing it, can simply be captured by step wise refinement of your capturing medium. Each new attribute your dragon develops you seek to understand and then erect a barrier so that attribute will not allow the dragon to escape.