Inspiration is overrated. Demonstrate value, instead. You don't need anyone's permission to go do customer development. Take a few days off. Talk to your cu

Inspiration is overrated. Demonstrate value, instead. You don't need anyone's permission to go do customer development. Take a few days off. Talk to your current customers. Shadow them in their workday. Talk to prospective customers. Shadow them in their workday. Find something on your current roadmap that isn't quite right based on what you learned. Then, give a short talk about it to the CEO. Hey, this great idea of yours, I talked with some customers about it and I think it's a little off and we'll have to rework it if we roll it out as-is, OR we can do it this way up front and save a bunch of time later. If they say sure, great. Do it again for a feature that's even more off-kilter. Continue until you're correcting large portions of the roadmap. If they say no, stand by your idea. Ask to build your version and A/B test it with 50% of your customer base. Instrument both versions heavily so you can see usage. Conduct follow-up interviews. See which one is really better. Now, it's possible you won't find much to fix, if your CEO really is "extremely knowledgable." You may already be hitting the 80% sweet spot, all the low-hanging fruit. Further disruption may be a long, hard slog for only 20% more value and your CEO may already recognize that. But you won't know that for sure until you do the research yourself.