I once worked with a company developing a novel treatment for PTSD. The real obstacle wasn’t the science, but it was the assumptions people already held about PTSD. Whenever I pitched new data or company milestones, the story landed on the veterans beat. Never the women’s health reporters covering postpartum trauma, assault and abuse. Never the health desks covering the lasting effects of car accidents or gun violence. Even though PTSD reaches them all, the world had already decided whose story it was.
Founders, scientists and executives spend years immersed in the problems they’re solving. Over time, they fall victim to the curse of expertise. What feels obvious to them is unfamiliar to everyone else, or worse, people are sure they already understand it.
Companies overestimate how the market defines the problem. They assume others see the same urgency, the same unmet need and the same opportunity for change. But people don’t look for solutions to problems they don’t recognize as their own.
An investor, a clinician and a patient may all be looking at the same problem, but each will define it differently, and rarely the way you do. Assuming they share your perspective is one of the quietest ways to lose them.
When a company comes to me with a breakthrough treatment, the questions are almost always the same:
- What’s the best date to announce our launch?
- Which reporters should we target?
- Which executives should we quote in the announcement?
They’re reasonable questions, but they aren’t the ones that determine market impact. The better questions are:
- Does our audience even recognize this as a problem?
- Why would they care now?
- What assumptions are we making about what they already know?
- What would have to change for them to see it differently?
These aren’t communications questions. They’re strategic business questions. Because if the market doesn’t see the problem the way you do, no amount of messaging will make your solution feel urgent.
The catch is that you can’t answer those questions from inside the building. In fact, you’re probably the least qualified person to try. Expertise changes how you see the world. After years spent studying a disease, developing a therapy or refining a technology, it’s almost impossible to remember what it feels like to encounter it for the first time.
The only way to close that gap is to stop assuming and start listening. The market will tell you what it understands, what it misunderstands and what it has never thought to question. Those insights should shape your communications strategy long before you decide what to say or who to pitch.
Companies spend years building better solutions. They spend far less time understanding how the market defines the problem those solutions are meant to solve.
That’s the expert’s blind spot.
The market rarely sees the world the way you do. And until you understand how it actually defines the problem, even the best solution can feel like an answer to a question nobody is asking.
