Everyone wants one million dollar ideabut it takes more than just imagination to turn brainwaves into a bankroll—it helps to have a proven method. Like most kids, I learned the scientific method in school, so the first time I wanted to start a business, I went with an approach I knew: I tested my business hypothesis, analyzed my results, and revised until I arrived at a solution. . . In the process, I learned to solve business challenges through product innovation, which led me to start Influence Mobile, develop our flagship product, and transform a simple idea into millions.

As a leader, I still use the same scientific approach to developing innovative products. To be competitive, we must always be innovativewhich means staying on the lookout for new problems to solve. Such innovative solutions often require us to make improvements we have never tried, asking questions we may not know the answers to. Even when approaching the unknown, we always have a tool to draw conclusions for more informed decision-making – the scientific method.

Related: The Scientific Method for Entrepreneurs: 6 Steps to Long-Term Success

Observe, question and hypothesize

To fully realize a million dollar idea, start with a clear goal in mind. Finding that initial spark often comes through its own scientific process: observing a problem to be solved and asking questions about how best to solve it. At our company, we recently noticed that push messages were a major driver of revenue and asked ourselves, “How can we engage long-term players of our app and increase the adoption and retention of push messages?” Our traditional strategy had focused on early engagement and day 1 ROAS, so this marked our first major investment in expanding the engagement window.

To navigate this new terrain, we let the scientific method be our guide: We observed end-user behavior and preferences, compared to past experiences, and asked how to drive engagement based on that data. Using our market knowledge and what we know about our users, we hypothesized that people would respond well to a game with monthly opportunities to collect and win and attractive gifts. We also came up with a few other hypotheses, but when we held them up against our existing data, we went with the one that seemed to most effectively lead us to a solution.

Related: How do you bring innovation to market?

Experiment and refine

To transform a product hypothesis into a income streamwe need to test and refine it into its most effective form. After developing our game and the aspects we predicted users would enjoy, we built a small prototype and shared it with a few hundred players. Again, we observed their behavior and asked more questions: How did they engage with the game? How many push notifications did they accept?

Surprisingly, 90% of players turned on push notifications and 6 out of 10 players chose to receive a maximum of 10 per day. Almost 40% of players who traded in-game items chose to trade instead of making the trades automatically. This high uptake of push messages and community engagement added new challenges for us to address, but initial feedback was promising.

However, no product is perfect right out of the gate. This is why the scientific method requires continuous experimentation. In product development, this means quick and frequent tests to confirm our theories or gather immediate feedback to refine the approach. After our initial testing, we distributed the game to larger and larger groups, surveyed players, and identified areas for improvement. Through user feedback and our own experiences, we determined that more game options would cater to different types of players and refined our product to meet more user needs.

Related: The Ten Commandments of Business Innovation

Analyze data and iterate improvements

With each test comes more data to improve further, each iteration bringing that initial idea closer to a product worthy of funding. Observe and identify key metrics that would indicate product success. Then, ask the question: How do we drive those metrics? Who are the right partners? What is the smallest version we can use to test? Start as broad as possible and then refine with each of the many iterations.

For us, accepting push messages directly affected user engagement, so we observed and asked questions: Did players engage with the game as expected? Did they accept more push notifications? What does the data tell us about their preferences? We brought in an experienced game development firm, conducted surveys, and analyzed player behavior, engagement, and acceptance of push messages before and after the game launched. Our hypothesis was on track, but by analyzing the data and refining this metric, we discovered what was working alongside the target areas for improvement.

Draw conclusions, initiate and learn

After multiple rounds of testing and refinement, we can draw conclusions about the best product to launch, which is most likely to bring in million dollar success. For our game, we concluded that competitive gameplay and personalized options would drive long-term engagement and acceptance of push notifications. So we started our own Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to a larger audience, evaluating new data and uncovering more problems. Again, we turned to the scientific method to observe, question, hypothesize, test, and process our greatest opportunities for improvement.

EARLY FEEDBACK it gave us confidence, but we didn't stop there. To truly measure retention and engagement is a tall order. The MVP phase taught us the impact of real-time scale, but the product is still in very early stages even after launching to tens of thousands of players. Just like our flagship app, which took years of testing and optimization to cross over a hundred million in revenue, we'll continue to gather data and refine with further improvements to ensure our game remains engaging and relevant .

The principles of the scientific method serve as a lifelong guide to problem solving and innovative ideas. This iterative process takes ideas through discovery and improvement and turns them into sustainable growth and success. Whether developing a new app, launching a product, or improving an existing service, the scientific method provides a structured process that anyone can apply to navigate innovation with greater confidence.