One of my old business partners, Kedron Wolcott (co-founder of Rapid Logic), forwarded me the following cartoon, which captures the paradox of developing breakout new products and services. 
Simply put, there are so many cooks in the kitchen AND so many definitions of what is the kitchen AND so many ways of defining the customer AND so many ways of defining what the customer really needs that most new products/projects simply fail.
There are good and clear strategies and tactics that one can deploy to mitigate these challenges, though. Past posts of mine have focused on the methodology of "starting in the middle," the importance of not confusing chicken parts with chicken and the integral-ness of codifying/tracking key metrics of success (and then iterating based on the resulting data). And this doesn't even begin to speak to marketing and selling side of the equation, which you can read about elsewhere on this blog.
But, to be clear, even on a good day, this stuff is hard. I am about two-thirds of the way through reading, "Dreaming in Code," a book about the (seemingly) ill-fated Chandler project, which spotlights these challenges from a software development perspective. Plus, I see it in my companies on a daily basis and and of course experience what comes out of the "kitchen" as a fanatical, but pragmatic, consumer.
Some days you spotlight solution paths. Others, you shine a light on the impact of negative gravity. Enjoy.
