So how do you avoid these kind of problems from occurring?
I know I've said this before in a number of other lectures, but
I cannot stress how important planning is.
And that's not just my view and the view of all of us here at Wharton who study
product design and innovation and entrepreneurship.
But it's also an overwhelming comment we got from people when we asked them what
the causes of delays were.
So plan as much as you can in advance and build slack into the system so
that one delay won't cause a cascading set of problems.
Something is going to go wrong in your project at some point most likely.
You want to make sure that that little delay or
little problem doesn't cascade into a set of problems for you.
So don't set everything too tight.
Make sure to give yourself time to deliver.
So even after building in slack there's still a lot of things that can happen.
And I want to go through some of the common pitfalls that we've identified as
a result of these surveys.
So one common problem is in working with partners, which we already talked about
was a major cause for delays and problems in fulfilling rewards.
And specifically, dealing with proofs and prototypes.
So you send something out to a printer, you send something out to an editor,
you send something to China to get produced and you get a prototype back and
the prototype usually has problems.
And people don't leave enough time or
money to deal with the fact that often there's rounds of corrections to do
with third party suppliers before you're comfortable with the end product.
So that's a big issue to think about and avoid.
A second problem is finding suppliers in general.
People who haven't done the research in advance and haven't located a printer,
haven't located a production facility, will often find it very difficult to do so
on the fly and learn how to do it.
So spend some time upfront finding potential partners to work with.
You don't need to finalize that in advance but
it helps to know that those things are problems that you might encounter.
Another big problem that came up were people's real jobs.
As I told you, most people,
about 80%, are doing their crowdfunding projects on the side.
So real jobs can intervene, you have a lot of projects due,
you have to work overtime, something happens at work.
So not leaving time to realize that you're going to have to spend 20
plus hours a week executing a new project can be a real problem.
Also other life issues interrupt.
So people get ill, family members get sick,
you have children or people have needs in your family.
All of those issues, personal, mental health, all come into play as well.
So thinking about realistically the challenges you might face and
leaving slack to deal with these things, and
to make sure you're taking care of yourself is really important.
Another major issue are key people fall through.
So I saw a lot of comments where somebody left the band at the last second.
Or a member of the artist collective left.
Or your CTO left the company.
If those things happen, it could throw you off.
So thinking about your organization, your team, in advance and
making sure that everyone is equally committed is important as well.
And for a very narrow cause that comes up in a huge number
of comments is actually Chinese New Year.
So the fact that China basically shuts down operations for a couple of weeks at
the beginning of February, end of January, due to the lunar calendar.
Is something that a lot of people don't anticipate, and
often can throw off production schedules by a considerable amount.
So if you are shipping things to China to get produced,
make sure you're aware of the Chinese holiday schedule.
Don't expect it to operate on the Western schedule that you might be more used to.
I also ask people who actually have projects that failed, why they failed.
And now you have to be a little careful with this data because a lot of people
won't admit the actual cause of failure, but
I think that those answers lined up pretty well with some of the causes for delays.
So one of those is a much more common,
much more serious version of the things that we saw before.
So not just having a family member who is ill, but having a death in the family,
having a real bought of sickness or mental illness.
Those can be serious concerns that can cause real delays,
very hard to predict those things from happening.
They're random and hopefully they will not be issues that you'll have to deal with.
And similarly, other nasty things that can happen, like robberies or
suppliers who run away with your money and shut down, are also causes for failures.
So it wasn't like the failures were very different from the cause of delays.
They were actually worse versions of the things that we saw delays being caused by.
