What would Cloudflare do?

Cloudflare is a good example of this. It keeps bringing new ideas into public view. Its releases range from developer tools to new ways of making the internet faster and safer. That breadth gives people new things to build with, and each release changes what they expect to be able to do next.

Cloudflare's stated mission is to ‘help build a better Internet’, and that mission carries a practical challenge. It invites anyone working on the internet to look at the things they have learnt to tolerate and ask how they could be improved: a slow process, a needless complication, a task that ought to be easier, a connection that ought to be safer. The next worthwhile idea is often already present in the work you do every day.

Someone notices a problem, builds a rough solution and discovers that it helps. It might save a few minutes, remove a whole class of mistakes, or make something possible that previously seemed too difficult to attempt. At that point there is something real to put in front of people. It may be a small feature, a tool, an experiment with a new protocol or the beginnings of a framework. The problem it solves matters more than its size.

This is where a company often hesitates. The prototype works, but there is no customer request attached to it, no procurement brief describes it, and no market category neatly contains it. So the company waits for demand to become unmistakable. Meanwhile, the people who might benefit go on working around the same problem without ever seeing that a better way exists.

Customers can describe the difficulties they face, but they cannot be expected to imagine every solution your company is capable of creating. You employ people who can see possibilities the rest of us have not noticed yet. Give them room to act on that knowledge, and let them bring useful ideas far enough into the world that people can try, question and improve them.

When a useful idea reaches people early, their experience can guide its development. An experiment can grow into a tool that people come to rely on. The company learns from its users while others are still waiting for a formal request. By the time demand is obvious, it already has working software, practical knowledge and users who can explain why it matters.

Listen closely to your customers, and look beyond the requests they already know how to make. Find the friction and build something that removes it. If it is a prototype, say so, and let people see what it can do. Give them something better to respond to.

The next time your company has built something useful and is wondering whether to wait for the market to ask, ask a better question.