(2009-10-20) Ries Mvp Big Vision

After discussing an Inc Mag article about the use of Minimum Viable Product design in non-StartUp companies, he discusses a different Framing of it.

But MVP is most powerful when it is used as part of an overall strategy of Learning and discovery. And this is the most confusing, because MVP does not pay off under this strategy if we are attempting to build a minimal product. For that, release early, release often will suffice. But if our aspiration is to Change The World, we need something more.

The key ideas are Customer Development, the Pivot (2009-06-22-RiesPivotVisionChange), MVP, and Root Cause analysis. Each is described in separate essays on this blog, but let me say a few words about how they work together - especially for companies with big ambitions. Big visions take a long time to develop, and require an exceptionally high degree of Product Market Fit. That's just a fancy way of saying: customers have to really, really like your product. Being specific, it means that their behavior powers one of the three fundamental drivers of growth with a large coefficient. But if big products and big visions take a long time to develop, it's exceptionally risky to build it based on vision alone. That's because for a big product to take off, it needs to be right in many key respects. Miss just one, and you can find yourself just a few degrees off - and moving with too much momentum to change course. Think Friendster, the "achieving a failure" startup I've written about, Apple Newton, WebVan, etc. In each of these, the failure of the initial idea led to the failure of the company (or division).

Building an MVP can help mitigate that risk. But it's not enough. What if customers hate the MVP? Does that mean your product vision is fundamentally flawed, or just that your initial product sucks? There is no way to know for sure. That's why entrepreneurship in a lean startup is really a series of MVP's, each designed to answer a specific question (hypothesis). Being systematic about these hypotheses is what Customer Development is all about.