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04Precedent · how it went for them

The situation“We keep building things people don't use.”

Leaders who made the same call — what each did, and how it went.

WorkedShouldn’t have been tried

Worked · Erika Cardona, Colombian Red Cross community resilience programmes, 2010s

Working for the Colombian Red Cross on community resilience programmes aimed at women in post-conflict regions, Erika Cardona faced a recurring problem: the training courses the NGO had designed — on financial literacy, small-enterprise skills, community leadership — were well-attended on paper but under-used by the specific cohort the programmes had been built for.

Worked · Melissa Hanna, Mahmee, 2014 onwards

Melissa Hanna co-founded Mahmee in 2014 with her mother, a nurse, as a maternal and infant health platform aimed at closing the gaps that open up in the days and weeks after an American mother leaves the hospital — a period the US healthcare system is structurally bad at.

Worked · Plancast, 2010–2012

Plancast was an elegant social platform for sharing your future plans — where you were going, what event you were attending, what you were doing this weekend.

Shouldn’t have been tried · Zillionears, early 2010s

The founders built what they thought was a clever pricing mechanism for selling music online.