Identifying opportunities
Intuit is a well-established financial software company based in the United States, with roughly 8,200 employees. Intuit’s co-founder Scott Cook, believes in lean startup thinking - launching a product or service as quickly as possible with just enough features to allow for meaningful feedback from potential consumers. This process of gaining feedback is known as prototyping.
A prototype is a basic version of an idea that is developed to allow the idea to be tested. It is essentially a draft version of a final product with limited features. Using a prototype rather than a finished product allows for testing without significant investment of time and resources. This is an important entrepreneurial method and one that Cook highly valued. When Cook identified that there was an opportunity to help people complete their tax returns, he applied this method within Intuit. He worked with employees to test ten different ideas in response to this opportunity.
One of these ideas was SnapTax, a smartphone app that lets users file their tax returns within 10 minutes by taking pictures of their tax records. This was an innovative response to the opportunity that Cook was able to identify and develop because of his access to Intuit’s resources. SnapTax actually threatened to take customers away from Intuit’s main product, QuickBooks (a financial desktop application), but Cook pursued it anyway and it became a huge success and reduced competition from external businesses.
Through the employment of lean methods, Cook recognised an opportunity to develop a new product for their existing customers. He worked with Intuit employees to develop multiple prototypes to test the perceived opportunity. Cook moved away from traditional means of product development and took a risk with releasing a product that technically competes with an existing Intuit product. He worked with a small agile team that were able to act autonomously from the larger company which allowed them to be agile and prototype to validate the perceived opportunity.
Intuit had been operating within the realm of tax preparation during 2011, when smartphones were becoming increasingly popular. This meant they had the necessary expertise and the right timing. As a large company, they also had the required resources to be successful. Cook also has expertise with lean startup thinking that gave him a competitive advantage over competitors.
Go to Business Insider for a quick introduction to SnapTax.