News came out today that the Palm CEO has killed one of its major new products: the Foleo.

http://blog.palm.com/palm/2007/09/a-message-to-pa.html

Can't imagine this being an easy decision. After $10m in development, he reached the conclusion that the product wasn't being built on the right platform. The solution: kill it dead.

I don't want to lament on whether he made the right decision to pursue the product in the first place, but I have to hand it too him to have listened so well to early feedback and then in making such a courageous decision.

I think part of being an entrepreneur is always questioning decisions. But you can't be constantly changing your mind or you'll never achieve the focus required to get anything done to any level of success (a painful lesson). My focus on solving this is with two rules:

1. Base decisions wherever possible on facts/trends and other evidence (not sure?; call 50 customers and ask)

2. If you have to guess, don't change your mind based on another guess - once you decide, stick with it until evidence changes it.

"If you have to guess, don't change your mind based on another guess - once you decide, stick with it until evidence changes it."

I would say thats great advice... Being a project manager I rely a lot on the resources I have at hand be it technology, people, skills etc. And at times I have to make decisions based on those resources and an "educated" guess as to what I believe will or should happen with a project.

That being said, I have made my share of bad decisions, however through making bad decisions I have learned that the best method is exactly as you said, only change your mind based on evidence against the first decision not on another guess. This helps with steering the project, and at times has help to justify other decisions made on the project before or after the educated "guess".

Investors don't like guesswork, and tend to only reward results, so if you have to guess stick with it, and create some stable ground (justification for decision) before changing a decision.

Its a pity they did lose $10M on the project, but I do agree: "This is a lot of money, but it is a small price relative to the costs that would be required to support two platforms going forward.". If they can re-coup the costs in the release of the Next-Gen Palm (which I believe they can, with the current R&D development of the platform) the loss of Foleo will be minor, and a good direction for Palm. I would also agree that it is better to put your resources into producing a product that is consistant with new developments instead of breaking off into 2 streams offering different aspects for the same type device "single, consistent user experience around this new platform design and a single focus for our platform development efforts."

This is an awesome topic. I don't have anything to add just yet, but avidly reading...