# Monetizing Innovation > Design the product around validated willingness to pay — an AI agent skill based on *Monetizing Innovation* by Madhavan Ramanujam & Georg Tacke. Published 2026-06-11 · Updated 2026-08-17 · Sales & Persuasion · Free and MIT-licensed Canonical: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/monetizing-innovation/ Source: https://github.com/wondelai/skills/tree/main/monetizing-innovation **Install:** `npx skills add wondelai/skills/monetizing-innovation --global` ## What is the Monetizing Innovation skill? Monetizing Innovation gives your AI agent the Simon-Kucher pricing method from Madhavan Ramanujam and Georg Tacke’s book: have the willingness-to-pay conversation while the product is still a concept. It segments customers by what they will really pay, sorts features into leaders, fillers and killers, and matches a monetization model to the behaviour you want. ## Key concepts from Monetizing Innovation your agent applies - **Price Before Product** — Have the willingness-to-pay talk at concept stage — 72% of new products miss revenue targets because price was an afterthought. - **Four Monetization Failures** — Feature shock, minivation, hidden gems, and undead products — each with a testable diagnosis and an opposite cure: cut, raise, spin out, kill. - **Segment by Willingness to Pay** — Averages lie — segment customers by needs, value, and WTP, then design a distinct offer for each segment worth serving. - **Leader, Filler, Killer Packaging** — Classify every feature: leaders drive purchase, fillers round out tiers, killers reduce WTP when bundled — pull them out as add-ons. - **Behavioral Pricing** — Anchors, the compromise effect, decoys, and price endings shape perceived value — and pre-set launch triggers prevent panic discounting. ## When to use Monetizing Innovation — and when not to Reach for it when: - You’re about to commit a roadmap to features nobody has been asked to put a price against. - Your pricing page has a single plan because the team could never agree where to draw the tier lines. - You shipped something genuinely impressive and revenue didn’t move a percentage point. - A feature that dazzled in demos now sits in a bundle buyers hesitate over, and you can’t work out why. Reach for something else when: - The price is settled and the job is making it feel worth paying — $100M Offers builds the package around it. - You’re haggling over one contract rather than setting a price list; Negotiation covers what happens in the room. - You don’t yet know whether the problem is real — The Mom Test gets you honest answers before pricing them. - The tiers are right and the page underperforms — CRO Methodology tests the layout, copy and objections. ## About Madhavan Ramanujam & Georg Tacke Simon-Kucher partners, pricing advisors to Silicon Valley unicorns. Madhavan Ramanujam is a board member and partner at Simon-Kucher & Partners who has advised many of Silicon Valley's unicorns on pricing. Georg Tacke was co-CEO of Simon-Kucher, the world's largest pricing and monetization consultancy. Together they distilled the firm's methodology into Monetizing Innovation. The book: https://openlibrary.org/books/OL27213013M/Monetizing_innovation ## Example prompts - Design a willingness-to-pay interview script for our new product concept using monetizing-innovation skill _(Pricing research)_ - Audit our pricing page tiers for leaders, fillers, and killers using monetizing-innovation skill _(Packaging)_ - Diagnose which of the four monetization failures we are drifting toward using monetizing-innovation skill _(Monetization audit)_ - Choose between subscription, usage-based, and freemium for our API using monetizing-innovation skill _(Model selection)_ ## Frequently asked questions ### How do I install the Monetizing Innovation skill? Run `npx skills add wondelai/skills/monetizing-innovation --global`. It takes about 30 seconds and needs no account. The Monetizing Innovation skill then works in Claude, Claude Code, Claude Cowork, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw and Hermes Agent — anything that reads the open agentskills.io format — and your agent loads it on its own when a task calls for it. It is free and MIT-licensed, and the source is at https://github.com/wondelai/skills. ### Which book is the Monetizing Innovation skill based on? It packages *Monetizing Innovation* by Madhavan Ramanujam & Georg Tacke — simon-Kucher partners, pricing advisors to Silicon Valley unicorns. The skill distils the book's method into instructions your agent follows while it works, covering price before product, four monetization failures and segment by willingness to pay. It sits in the Sales & Persuasion part of the library. ### What are leaders, fillers and killers? A classification for every feature you own. Leaders drive the purchase and should anchor a tier. Fillers add rounding-out value but rarely close anyone. Killers actively reduce willingness to pay when bundled — a segment resents them, or their presence makes the tier feel aimed at someone else — so they belong as paid add-ons, not inclusions. Most pricing pages are all filler and one accidental killer, which the skill will name. ### How does this differ from the Mom Test skill? The Mom Test protects you from flattery about the problem: ask about their life, not your idea. This skill takes the next question — what would you pay — which is precisely the one people answer least honestly, because saying yes to a hypothetical costs nothing. So it leans on indirect questions, purchase-intent scales read with deliberate discounting, and trade-off exercises where respondents must give something up to get something. ### Is the book worth reading if I have the skill? The skill runs the process; the book is where the diagnosis gets vivid. Its four failure modes — feature shock, minivation, hidden gem, undead product — are much easier to recognise in your own product line after reading a dozen worked cases from Simon-Kucher’s client work than from a definition. Read it if you suspect you’re in one of the four and want to be sure which before acting on the cure. ### Does this only apply to products that haven’t shipped? Its strongest claim does. “Design the product around the price” needs a product still open to change, and if yours launched three years ago that ship has sailed. What transfers is everything downstream: segmenting by willingness to pay, repackaging tiers, pulling killers out as add-ons, choosing a different model. Be careful with the last mile — repricing existing customers carries migration and churn risk that the book treats more lightly than your support inbox will. ## Related - All Sales & Persuasion skills: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/sales/ - $100M Offers: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/hundred-million-offers/ - Negotiation: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/negotiation/ - Influence Psychology: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/influence-psychology/ - Predictable Revenue: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/predictable-revenue/ - CRO Methodology: https://skills.wondel.ai/skills/cro-methodology/