Understanding Market Acceptance
Leveraging the Overton Window to Shape and Successfully Design New Products by Innovating with the Zeitgeist
Why do some products take years to catch on while others become instant sensations? Through the lens of the Overton Window—a framework for societal acceptance—we can understand this phenomenon. By grasping this concept, we see how the zeitgeist shapes innovation and product evolution, enabling the creation of successful products that tap into a market ready to embrace new solutions.
Sections Covered:
Introduction to the Overton Window
The Overton Window in Product Design
Designing for the Future: Anticipating Shifts
1. Introduction to the Overton Window
The Overton Window is a political model that helps us understand how societal ideas change over time. It illustrates the range of ideas politicians can support without losing public approval. However, this model isn't limited to politics—it can also be applied to cultural trends, technology, and products.
By examining how the Overton Window shifts, we can see how societal norms influence innovation and product acceptance. This understanding is crucial for product designers and innovators who want to create successful, market-ready solutions that match the zeitgeist, or the current spirit and trends of the time.
The Overton Window categorizes public opinion on an idea, indicating how society or the market perceives it. Politicians usually support ideas within the window because they are widely accepted. Ideas outside the window are seen as too extreme and risky. However, the window can move, meaning what’s acceptable can change as societal values evolve, making once unthinkable ideas mainstream.
While the Overton Window is primarily a political concept, it also directly impacts product design and innovation. Just like bold political ideas, revolutionary products often struggle to gain approval and support if they fall outside the current Overton Window. This means new products need time, stakeholder approval, and a clear return on investment to succeed. Because it’s so hard to gain acceptance for radical ideas, most progress tends to be incremental. Historical examples like personal computers, smartphones, and renewable energy show how products can evolve from radical or unthinkable to essential parts of modern life through iteration. Personal computers were once seen as too complex, but over time they became everyday tools. Smartphones started as luxury items, but now they are essential for communication and productivity. Renewable energy was initially costly and faced skepticism, but now it is widely accepted due to technological advances and environmental concerns.
By understanding these stages, product designers and innovators can better predict how their ideas will be received. The Overton Window shows the importance of timing, societal readiness, and strategic communication in launching new products. Knowing where an idea falls within the Overton Window helps innovators shift public perception, moving ideas from radical to mainstream. This increases the chances of success by aligning innovations with society’s changing values and needs.
Political commentator Joshua Treviño expanded on the Overton Window model by adding six degrees of acceptance for public ideas. These stages show how an idea goes from being completely unacceptable to widely accepted and implemented:
Unthinkable: An idea or product is seen as too extreme or far-fetched to be taken seriously. It faces strong resistance and ridicule. Early concepts of the internet or electric cars were once seen this way.
Radical: The idea gets some attention and support from niche groups but is still seen as unconventional. Early adopters of personal computers in the 1970s faced this stage.
Acceptable: The idea starts to be taken seriously by a broader audience and is considered a viable option. Renewable energy sources like solar and wind power have reached this stage.
Sensible: The idea is now seen as practical and gains widespread support. Smartphones, once novel, are now widely used for daily activities.
Popular: The idea becomes widely accepted and embraced by most people. Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are now essential for daily communication.
Policy: The idea is institutionalized and regulated by governments and organizations. Data privacy laws, created in response to the digital age, exemplify this stage.
A great example of the Overton Window in action involves the regulation of seatbelts in the United States. Before 1965, most people saw mandatory seatbelt use as unthinkable. In 1968, the federal government required all vehicles to have seat belts. In 1984, New York became the first state to mandate seat belt use. Today, seatbelt regulation is widely accepted public policy in the US and across the world. While localization plays a part, in our globalized world, the success of one policy or product often spreads quickly across the globe.
In
’s recent podcast with former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Blair discussed how policymakers often fear change makers, who in turn see policymakers as obstacles. This fear leads to a lack of dialogue between the two groups, highlighting the differing paces between the development of products and technologies. Tech products can quickly align with current sentiments, while policy development often takes longer, focusing on long-term stability solutions. This difference creates a communication gap, as policymakers and innovators struggle to understand and collaborate with each other.For instance, the rapid rise of ride-sharing apps like Uber highlights this dynamic. Initially seen as a radical idea outside the Overton Window, ride-sharing faced significant regulatory challenges. As public opinion shifted to embrace its convenience, the Overton Window moved, and policymakers eventually created new regulations, in response to its disruption. This example shows how tech products can quickly adapt to and shape public opinion, while policies are more reactive, taking longer to stabilize. It underscores the challenge of aligning innovation with regulatory frameworks and illustrates the need for strategic communication and timing to move ideas from radical to mainstream acceptance within the Overton Window.
2. The Overton Window in Product Design
Products are not created in silos—they reflect the culture and environment they are born in. Successful product design strikes a balance between the current environment and the future it aims to shape.
Each stage of the Overton Window requires a different approach to product development and marketing. As an idea progresses from Unthinkable to Policy, strategies must adapt. In the Unthinkable stage, a product might need extensive research and development. In the Popular stage, the focus shifts to scaling and distribution. This process expands the market of interested buyers and aligns the product with societal acceptance. Understanding and leveraging the Overton Window helps designers and innovators capture the market zeitgeist and navigate these stages, increasing the likelihood of their products becoming widely accepted and successful.
New technological advancements often create paradigm shifts, forcing both incumbents and new entrants to adapt. Conversational AI is a prime example, evolving from unthinkable to widely accepted due to its user-friendly interface and accessibility, making it a mainstream product.
Products typically start in niche markets and gradually gain mainstream acceptance as they are adopted by different communities. Although not a new concept, AI’s recent prominence in consumer marketing and everyday applications marks a significant shift in its Overton Window. For decades, AI has been used in the backend of technology products and by technologists, powering systems and processes behind the scenes. The journey from specialized use to popular consumer products involved decades of research, hardware improvements, and large datasets for training models. This convergence of independent R&D advancements and a focus on user impact made large language models feasible and practical for direct consumer interactions, such as virtual assistants, chatbots, and personalized recommendations. As a result, AI has achieved widespread acceptance and integration into everyday life.
The video above is a clip from Apple’s 1997 WWDC Event where Steve Jobs responds to an engineer's critique with a crucial insight:
"You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can't start with the technology and try to figure out where you're going to try to sell it.”
Jobs emphasizes that any policy or product must be designed to serve the people it affects, reflecting on his extensive experience and the lessons learned from past mistakes. He acknowledges having “scar tissue” from launching products that weren’t ready for the market to accept, underscoring the importance of aligning innovation with user needs. This principle is vital for product designers and policymakers alike: start with the user experience, anticipate societal acceptance, and navigate the stages of the Overton Window to ensure success.
3. Designing for the Future: Anticipating Shifts
Designers and innovators can benefit from understanding the Overton Window by predicting which radical ideas will gain mainstream acceptance. By staying attuned to cultural and technological trends, they can anticipate future shifts and position their products accordingly. This, to me, is what puts the artistry in product and innovation.
As the Overton Window shifts, there are greater opportunities to create value for a wider range of people. When a technology becomes more user-friendly and transitions from niche markets to the mainstream, the market evolves and attracts more funding. However, this increase in market potential can often be a bottleneck for many products. Radical innovation tends to be more costly and has a higher failure rate, whereas incremental innovation consistently drives better solutions. This concept is highlighted by Don Norman in The Design of Everyday Things.
Marc Andreessen’s blog post, The only thing that matters, quoting Andy Rachleff's Law of Startup Success, states:
The #1 company-killer is lack of market.
When a great team meets a lousy market, market wins.
When a lousy team meets a great market, market wins.
When a great team meets a great market, something special happens.
While this insight about achieving product-market fit is valuable, it's important to recognize that the market is dynamic and constantly evolving. Product-market fit isn't a static achievement but rather an ongoing process of adaptation and refinement.
External factors will always change, and the market will inevitably evolve. You need to keep iterating and moving forward, or you’ll get left behind. As an innovator, you are always trying to find the right moment for your solution to be accepted. However, this window of opportunity can close quickly. New advancements might make your solution less effective, or market preferences might change. It’s important to act fast and stay adaptable.
This is why discovery, research, and feedback are crucial in product work. To craft the best products, you need to understand the job your product or policy aims to do. This involves continuous learning about the population or market you want to impact. A skeptical market needs a completely different solution than an established one. It’s like polling in politics — we must keep a finger on the pulse, understand what people are feeling and need, and strive to empower them. Research and feedback help ensure that products evolve with changing needs and preferences, allowing us to create solutions that truly resonate with and benefit users, aligning with the zeitgeist of the time.
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Keep Iterating,
—Rohan
Great piece!
As the Overton Window moves, how do you predict if it's moving in your favor, or how to position for an eventual move?
Do you have any principles or long-term perspectives that guide this?