What prototyping has to do with film-making

Recently I listened to an interview with the famous film-maker Quentin Tarantino. He spoke about what the process of film-making looks like for him.

When he starts, he typically has a very rough, high-level plot idea, maybe one or two main characters and the music (!!!!) for the film in his mind. With nothing more than that, he starts writing the first scene of the film. By working on the details of the characters, the setting, the atmosphere and the story of that first scene he understands if there is something more to it. If the film and the story „actually works“. And if that is the case, he said, the film „writes itself“. The characters take the story from him and everything else falls in place.

Why do I think this is interesting? Because I think what we do in business design, and specifically in prototyping, is kind of the same thing. We have a rough idea in our minds, dive very quickly into the details of that idea, build the „first scene“ of that idea with a prototype and take it from there. Everything else is determined by the things we learn while working on the details. Business Design is the methodology and the framework to think and work like this. With Business Design, we quickly validate if our idea "actually works".

The key is to very quickly "write that first scene". That's what most of our customers struggle with the most.

Let's work like Quentin Tarantino! 

Fun fact: According to Tarantino, that's why the strongest, most intense scenes of his films are most of the time the first scene. Because when he writes it, he puts everything the film will be in it (characters, music, storyline...) and tries to convince himself that this story is a good idea.