Summary: Ego can help heighten drive. However, it can climb into the driver’s seat and take you for a ride.
In the early 90s I worked at a design firm called IDEO Product Development. Clients would come to the company with their ideas for products and the designers and engineers would execute on the client’s vision. With some seniority at the company came the ability to lobby the powers that be to work or not to work on particular projects that came through the front door. I remember a couple in particular that the company undertook at pretty close to the same time. The first was for a laboratory urinalysis machine. Beyond all the design challenges associated with medical devices, the product also entailed electrical and optical subsystems, fluid transfer, mechanical subsystems and very tight packaging. At the same time Nike came to the company looking for help to design and engineer some sports sunglasses. Lobbying ensued. Which do you think the engineers (including me) gravitated toward? It was obviously the Nike sunglasses. Why? The social constructs that people held over the two projects were amazingly strong influencers. I imagined being in a social setting with my friends when they asked what I had worked on recently. When I thought of the two programs I could imagine myself looking down at the floor while I sheepishly said “urinalysis machine”. In contrast, I could image my pride in pulling out a pair of sunglasses and simply stating, “Nike” as they got passed around the group.
Looking back now some 15 years later, that was completely the wrong state of mind. I wound up getting to help on the glasses and I got to fulfill some short term ego requirements. Did I come away with anything in the long term? The project had no meat. There was very little engineering involved. It was mainly a surfacing project. The industrial designers had defined the shape and it was up to the engineers to get it into CAD. I think back now about the people who wound up working on the urinalysis machine. It was an amazingly difficult project. The technical challenges were immense. They got exposure to customers and a market that were utterly foreign to them. Those engineers came out richer than when they went in. I came away with a slightly larger ego but nothing of real value to show for it.
I started thinking about this again because of the new company ideas we are evaluating at VentureNiche. I have to remain cognizant that the allure of some of the ideas may be rooted in ego. It acts as a strong magnet. Some ideas are just plain sexy. It is socially attractive to be working on mass products with broad appeal. However, it is the unsexy, niche markets that often hold the greatest return. Competitors are drawn like moths to flame when the idea is sexy and products have the potential to cross the chasm to broad market acceptance. Niche markets are just plain easier in some respects. Often, competition is lacking. Margins are often higher. And the sustainability of a particular business model can often be much longer. So I say, bring on the urinalysis machines and leave the sunglasses for someone else.