Creating your minimum viable product (MVP)

- To be disruptive, you have to have an idea that solves a real problem. Like when Dave Meyers, a fabric company, W. L. Gore, used his dabble time to identify that one of their products, a coating for push pull cables, could make guitar strings more comfortable to use and more long lasting. Today, they are the number one selling acoustic guitar string. Your idea has to change a game, reinvent a market, maybe even replace the existing business. It doesn't have to be huge, but it does have to be meaningful. But once you have your big vision, you have to go from telescope to microscope, and think really small to create your minimum viable product or MVP. Your MVP is the smallest first step you can take to see if your idea has legs. Frito-Lay's mission statement is to be the world's favorite snack and always within arm's reach. That's a pretty big vision and one that's making me hungry for some flaming hot Cheetos. You can get your Doritos at any supermarket or deli, and even in the vending machine at the local high school. But how do you put them always within arm's reach? Maybe you have the idea to create a Doritos subscription that delivers a customized salty snack box to homes, and then replenishes it daily. Before you'd create the box and publicize the offer and staff the call center, you'd wanna figure out if it was worth the investment. First, you'd do the math to see if it could make a profited scale. But then, you'd need to start testing the viability. I use an approach I call learning and leverage. Here's how it works. Start with that big vision, a vending machine in every home and drones flying overhead, dropping chips on our doorsteps each morning. Then ask yourself, "Why wouldn't I borrow a billion dollars "and do that tomorrow?" Your answers to this question usually come down to a need to build learning, or leverage. Learning questions relate to information you don't have yet and might include, how many bags of chips would someone eat if they never ran out home? Does drone technology work to deliver chips and is it as cheap as I think it is? You also need to build leverage with people who might be reluctant to support your idea. For example, the person responsible for relationships with convenience stores might worry that your vending machines might make the 7-Elevens and Store 24 owners angry, and worried about competition. So you're gonna have to prove that your idea isn't going to cannibalize those sales, or that your idea is going to be preferred by most households and more profitable for your company. In other words, you need leverage to win over or overpower the head of convenience store sales. Think like a chess player. One by one, you need to demonstrate evidence that your idea has legs. Maybe your MVP is a test, where you put a lock box on the porches of 20 homes, filled with chips, to evaluate whether those families eat more chips when they don't run out. If you need to test willingness to pay, bill the test families for what they eat. The important thing is to stay focused. You don't need to manufacture vending machines for the home, or set up massive distribution systems until you first prove that you can increase consumption, or that people are even willing to have a chip box at home. Then the next step might be proving that you can scale your vision in a cost effective way. But don't invest in scaling until you know people actually want it. Your MVP is the milestone that gives your boss and yourself confidence to continue down your path. Now is a good time to define your own MVP. Grab a piece of paper and write down what you think you need to accomplish in this first phase, to prove to your boss and to yourself that you're on to something big. Remember, keep your MVP as small as possible, but no smaller.