A conversation about starting a bathing suit company should be fairly straightforward. Pick the customer. Understand the style. Make something people want to wear. Sell it. That was the size of the original idea.
Then came a reasonable question: could technology help somebody know when it is actually bathing suit weather? Weather is local. Comfort is personal. A useful answer would depend on both. That sounded like something worth prototyping.
Once you are thinking about weather and swimwear, it is a short step to matching an outfit to the destination. Then a shorter step to knowing which beaches and resorts fit the trip. None of these is an absurd business problem on its own. That, of course, is how the conversation gets interesting.
By the time we drew the whole system, the sketch included clothing, weather, destinations, hotels and bookings. We had gone from a product to a potential travel experience. The sensible next step was to test the smallest useful part.
The result became a playful concept you can actually visit at TripAndHoliday.com. It is a demonstration of how far an idea can travel, and a reminder that a strong idea still needs a sequence.
My wife is understandably interested in that last word: sequence.