What is the solution space and how is it different from the problem space?

The solution space is every way the problem could be answered. Entering it well means three things: every candidate traces to a validated problem, several candidates exist before one is chosen, and each is judged on feasibility, viability and a clear path to build, not on how exciting it is.

Why should you generate several solutions before picking one?

The solution space is every way the problem could be answered. Entering it well means three things: every candidate traces to a validated problem, several candidates exist before one is chosen, and each is judged on feasibility, viability and a clear path to build, not on how exciting it is.

How do you evaluate a solution idea before building it?

The solution space is every way the problem could be answered. Entering it well means three things: every candidate traces to a validated problem, several candidates exist before one is chosen, and each is judged on feasibility, viability and a clear path to build, not on how exciting it is.

Solution space · Product Discovery

§If the is what is already true, the solution space is what could be. It is every approach that would answer the problem, from the obvious to the absurd, and it is the part of discovery that founders enjoy, because it is the part where they get to make things up.

§That is exactly why it has to be entered carefully.

§ 2.1The three conditions#

§A solution idea is worth carrying forward when three things are true of it.

§It traces to a validated problem. Not a problem the team finds interesting, a problem the previous chapter's work confirmed: observed, patterned, costed. Every solution should be able to point at the specific need, behavior or constraint it addresses. One that cannot is a feature looking for a reason.

§It is one of several. The first solution that comes to mind is almost always the one the industry already offers, or the one the founder's background makes visible. Tim Brown's account of design at IDEO makes divergence a discipline rather than a mood: generate many options on purpose, including ones you are sure are wrong, because the good option is usually a recombination of two bad ones. A team that evaluates a single idea is not choosing; it is confirming.

§It is judged on the risks that kill products. Marty Cagan names four: value, whether anyone wants it; usability, whether they can use it; , whether the team can build it; viability, whether it works as a business. Value is settled in the problem space. The other three are the solution space's questions, and a solution is only a candidate once someone has asked all of them.

§ 2.2Why several#

§The reason to hold several options is not thoroughness. It is that solutions carry hidden assumptions about the problem, and only comparison exposes them. Two solutions to "founders lose track of deals" might be a pipeline tool and a weekly coaching call. Setting them side by side reveals what each assumes: one assumes the problem is memory, the other assumes it is discipline. That comparison is a discovery finding about the problem, and it is only visible in the .

§ 2.3What a solution is for, at this stage#

§At a startup the first solution is not the . It is a question about the problem, expressed in a form a stranger can react to. Product Sprint covers the ladder of fidelity, from a sentence to a working prototype, and the discipline of putting each rung in front of people who owe you nothing. Here the point is only what the solution is for: it is the instrument that turns the problem-space work into evidence.

§Two spaces, then. The next chapter is the test for knowing which one you are standing in.

2. Solution space