Sometimes a great idea has no market.

What? I hear you say? Burn him at the stake the heretic!

But it’s true, not all great ideas have a market!

The failure of retractable syringes to gain a foothold is a case in point. One company we know of developed a great piece of technology that allowed the needle to be drawn back into the shaft of the syringe after use. This simple and brilliant design prevented the syringe from inadvertently injuring people.

A great idea. And a wonderful solution to what would seem to be a very important and unmet need.

However, the concept failed to take off and late last year the company was de-listed from the stock exchange. Sadly this is not an unfamiliar story. The question is why?

The Jobs framework

Through our use of the Jobs based framework( based on Clayton Christensen’s seminal work) we can provide a potential analysis and hypothesis as to what went wrong. And please note, this is a hypothesis only.

Our guess is that the developers of this product focused primarily on one major and obvious problem - preventing ‘injury by a needle after it has being used’

By doing so they ignored other potential opportunities and also what could have  been potentially ‘fatal flaws’.

In this case the jobs framework seeks to understand all the things people who use syringes, and people who deal with syringes are trying to get done when getting rid of a used syringe. Importantly, not only does it identify what they are trying to get done, it also allows people to prioritise these jobs in terms of how well they are being solved.

Now the hypothesis of the technologists in our syringe example, is that getting rid of the needle was all important. However, storing the used syringes safely, removing used syringes from sight, keeping the cost of a syringe low are all other important jobs that need to be solved at the same time. By providing only one part of the solution the retractable syringe developer opened themselves up to classic disruption and that is exactly what happened.

An existing player in the disposal market launched a Smart yellow box. It has a hole in the top, you plonk the sharp in and done.

By placing them everywhere they made disposal easier. By offering to empty them they extended their existing business model into a new market. By solving the problem with a box, they defeated the new technology because there was simply no need for it.

While the retractable syringe was a great idea, there was simply no market for it.

Classic disruption.

This is wonderful example of disruptive innovation. Low end technology doing a good enough job. The problem simply did not warrant a high end solution. The power of the jobs framework is that it allows you to unpack the ‘unmet’ needs of a market at a granular level, but with an objective perspective.

Michael R Johnson