INDUSTRIAL DESIGN: why B2B is harder to get right

The person approving the purchase and the person using it every day are almost never the same. They care about completely different things.

The buyer wants a defensible decision. Cost per unit, compliance specs, integration timeline. The user wants something that fits how they actually work, not how a procurement brief assumed they worked.

Most B2B products fail because they solve one convincingly and ignore the other. The product that wins the spreadsheet but loses the floor never gets reordered. The product users love but finance cannot justify never ships.

A recent example I like to use is the emerging powered exoskeletons industry. Affordable but awkward and uncomfortable dies at adoption. Performs well but costs more than the problem it solves dies in the budget. Solving half the equation is not a strategy.

If you expect to win at B2B, you have to solve for the business and the user.

Making ideas reality.