Recently, I hired professionals to cut down some large, dead trees near my house. I then used a chainsaw to cut the trees into smaller, moveable pieces that I could chop for firewood. I was making slow progress when the chain pinched and broke a few teeth. I was about to head to the hardware store to get a replacement chain, when my wife pointed out that the chainsaw I was using worked best on trees below a certain maximum radius. The trees I was cutting up were considerably larger. As a result, I invested in a new chainsaw that was better able to handle the task at hand. With the new tool, my progress was faster and less strenuous.
The right tool for the right job. That adage applies to most everything we do, whether cutting up trees or developing new products. A lack of tools or poor tools are not necessarily bad—if you have sufficient time and energy to overcome those limitations. For cutting up large trees, a suboptimal chainsaw is better than an axe or nothing at all, but it’s not better than a chainsaw designed specifically for the task.