Speed Is the New Moat

When I was young, I mostly heard the elders say a proverb: "A patient dog eats the fattest bone." It's been a while since I have heard anyone say that proverb, and there is a reason for that.

In the world we live in, being patient doesn't always work anymore, because the economics of innovation have changed. In earlier times, you could let an idea sit for years while people found out it was useful. Today, the ability to quickly test whether an idea has a market can be your competitive advantage.

An idea is nothing right now, there are ideas everywhere. Whatever you plan to build, someone has built a similar version, and someone is also planning to build your version at the same minute you think your idea is special.

The distance between ideas and execution is getting smaller every day.

Two months ago, I had an idea of something to build, I was thinking of building it when WritePat gained enough traction. A day later I read a newsletter from someone talking about how he has started building a similar version of the idea I had.

To move faster than everyone in your space, you need speed. How fast can you take an idea and make it into a finished product, because if you don't, someone else will. We are in an age where one person can build a full working product MVP in 48 hours, and you still think being patient will get you what you want, while others are going all in.

Post-it Notes: When Patience Was Still an Option

In 1968, 3M scientist Spencer Silver was trying to develop a stronger adhesive. Instead, he created something almost useless for the original purpose: an adhesive made from tiny acrylic microspheres that could stick to a surface but also peel away easily.

Silver knew the product was unusual. The problem was that he couldn't figure out what it was for. Then he decided to show the adhesive to people around 3M who were looking for applications. 3M describes it as a solution looking for a problem.

Then came Art Fry.

Fry was a 3M scientist who sang in a church choir. He was frustrated because the paper bookmarks in his hymnal kept falling out. So he remembered Silver's adhesive. His thought was: What if the adhesive could hold the bookmark in place but let him remove it without damaging the page?

Fry began to experiment with coating paper with Silver's adhesive. Eventually, the team realized they weren't just making a better bookmark. They had created an entirely new way to attach temporary notes to things. They became the Post-it notes with single or multiple colors you see in most offices today.

The timeline it took:

• 1968: Silver discovers the adhesive

• Years: searching for a useful application

• 1974: Fry develops the adhesive-backed note concept

• 1977: 3M test-markets it as Press 'n Peel in four cities

• 1980: Post-it Notes launch nationally in the U.S.

So you're looking at roughly 12 years from the original discovery to the national launch. And even the first test wasn't an instant success.

In the old world, Silver could've discovered something and spent years asking, "What can this become?" There wasn't an expectation that he needed to validate the idea with thousands of users next week, the organization could afford to explore and give it time.

Waiting isn't dead, and Post-it actually proves that patience can be valuable, but for a long time, innovation could afford to be slow. Post-it Note because the technology needed time to find its application. In today's world, the cost of finding out whether an idea works has collapsed.

You can publish an idea today, put it in front of thousands of people, measure the response, change it tomorrow, launch a product, collect feedback, and iterate.

So the question has gone from: "Who has the best idea?" to "Who can find out what works fastest?"

How Zara Built a System That Learns Fast

Zara is known to be one of the fastest from idea to production when it comes to their product, especially clothes. Although most people see them as the company that makes clothes quickly, that's true, but it's not the deeper lesson here. Zara built a system that can make their entire loop faster than usual.

Their loop goes from: Customer - information - designer - prototype - production - store - customer, and then it repeats the same sequence. While others are fighting to understand what is going on with their product, they build a system that makes it easier for the customer to make the decision. The process goes from customer first to customer last.

Inditex says its stores and online channels analyze customer demands daily, design teams review collections based on the information they collected, its supply chain uses short production runs, and logistics gets new products into stores twice a week.

That right there is the real moat, and that is what people who understand it are using to go from idea to product within a few weeks. If big companies can adapt such a strategy, you can as well.

A concrete example in one case documented by The Wall Street Journal and reported by Fast Company: Zara developed a coat from concept to store in less than a month, such speed is unlikely in most of the fashion industry. The sequence was roughly estimated as follows:

• 5 days - Designer developed the design

• 13 days - Manufacturers produced 8,000 coats

• 24 hours - The finished product traveled from Spain to New York

The crazy part is that the customers could buy the coat in less than a month from the initial development process. But here is what makes it strategically interesting: Zara wasn't simply hiring people to work faster, based on the system they've built, that changed the architecture of the business.

Zara is one of the fashion brands that shortened the distance between the customer and the factory. Traditional fashion companies often had to predict what their customers would want months in advance, but Zara tried to move in the opposite direction — why wait when you can know what your customers want and give it to them sooner.

Its store managers are the ones listening to the customers, watching what people are doing and asking for, and sending that info to the headquarters. They understand what the customer wants and use an integrated manufacturing and logistics system to deliver it quickly.

That is a huge difference from most brands:

• Other brands: Predict - manufacture - distribute - hope

• Zara: Observe - make - distribute - observe again

Zara builds a business that learns fast from its customers, not one that builds and hopes its customers need them.

A Patient Dog Eats Nothing

The world that gave Post-it Notes room to take 12 years is not the world we're building in now. That world rewarded patience because there was no way to know faster. Now there is.

I was told "a patient dog eats the fattest bone" multiple times by elderly people, but that is not right anymore. Now, "A patient dog eats nothing." When you order food and they start taking more than 30 minutes without it being delivered, you start losing your patience. People don't want patience anymore, they want speed. That is the era we are in now.

The world we're building now rewards a different kind of company, not necessarily the company with the best initial idea. It's the company that can test, learn, and adapt faster.

People want to help, so let them. If you are building something, instead of just going from idea to production, ask people what they want and why they think this is better. Start a waitlist to see how many people join. In the process of them joining, do a quick survey of what they would prefer.

When you get the information you want, do not wait for the perfect time because there would never be any. The perfect time is now.

WritePat was my first customer-based app, it took 3 weeks for the first MVP. I had no solid experience before then, but I knew that I needed to move faster, and that is what I did.

Speed isn't about doing everything quickly, it's about reducing the time between action and learning.

- Owol.

P.S. If you're sitting on an idea right now, start the waitlist before you build the product. That one step will tell you more than months of planning ever could.

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