Adopting the idea of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) can be a change of mindset that is liberating!
It gets us away from perfectionism, for believing that a new service or product has to be perfect before launching it.
It gives us permission to experiment without embarrassment, to test the market with a “just good enough for now” product or service.
This approach also shortens timescales and allows a sense of urgency. Instead of planning weeks or months ahead, when “time is money”, it means that we can produce and launch an MVP in weeks or even days.
It’s a rough and ready approach that makes business sense for innovations and diversification.
The key to using the MVP approach is to specify just how good the “good enough for now” first version needs to be. It doesn’t need to be perfect or over-specified, but it does have to have enough functionality for customers to try it or use it meaningfully, in order to get useful responses from them.
What to do next:
– Use “MVP Thinking” to break away from the shackles of a perfectionist way of thinking that can slow us down when time is critical. Use this concept to change your mindset in the first instance.
– For each diversification option under consideration, decide what would be the Minimum Viable Product. The ease (or not) of putting together an MVP might be a factor in deciding which diversification innovations to test first.
– Then specify the MVP in more detail, making sure it’s not over-specified for our purposes, yet with enough features to be a meaningful “first draft” of our new product or service.