Blog : Minimum Viable Product

Innovation or Innovation Theater?
imagine.GO

Innovation or Innovation Theater?

Most Innovation Efforts Yield Poor ROI

“But when I have drilled down into the work the so-called innovation labs were actually doing day-to-day, I have discovered that it is actually the innovation managers that “don’t get innovation” It turns out your boss was right to shut down your lab and here are five reasons why.” Forbes, Tendayi Viki

We try and stay pretty positive about innovation and disruption – after all, it is what we do for a living. However, I saw this article recently, and it struck a chord with our entire team.

Five Reasons Your Boss Was Right To Shut Down Your Innovation Lab

From the article, we agree with the author’s points about:

  1. Most people working innovation labs tend to conflate innovation with creativity.
  2. A lot of innovation labs are working on projects that are not aligned with the parent company’s strategic goals.
  3. Innovation labs need to have a strategic focus.
  4. The job of an innovation manager is not to imitate the outcomes of innovative companies (i.e. ping pong tables and bean bags), but to understand and implement innovation practices to create one.
  5. After many years, most innovation labs have to demonstrate impact.
NYU Tandon School of Engineering, CITE Game Innovation Lab

How Do You Know If Your Innovation Effort Needs Disrupting?

I am proud that (before it was all the rage) I was one of the 1st Chief Innovation Officers in healthcare.   As part of a $12-billion-dollar machine that had been running pretty much the same way for 75 years, I certainly found the task daunting.  Coming from the startup world, where I had successfully helped launch national healthcare disruptors like RediClinic and The Little Clinic, it was a shock to the system (mine and theirs). That journey is food for another story. However, my time there changed me in a very positive way, and I am certainly pleased with the results.

I mention it, however, because the article above made me realize what I could not verbalize but was feeling – most corporate innovation programs are little more than “innovation as theater.”  Even with best intentions, many of them have missed their purpose, which is to disrupt. Instead, many innovation managers busy themselves (and burden others) with the non-essential work.

We decided to add in a few self-check questions that we believe all innovation managers should ask themselves. And if the answer is “Yes” (please be honest here) to most of them – then you probably need to rethink your innovation efforts.

  • Is your Innovation Lab more than walking distance for more than 95% of your employee base?If so, bad idea. Innovation is for anyone who can contribute – incrementally or significantly. Who are we to think innovation only lies with a small team? This approach is a sure fire way of creating the “us vs. them” scenario.
  • Do less than half of your “market ready” innovation projects get adopted by the core business?If so, then you are probably innovating for yourself. If no one wants or can use your best work, then you are not aligned with the work of the “core.” Remember, it is the big machine that pays for your experiments (and expresso machine and bean bags). You have to be meaningful to them if you want your work to take root in the market and grow.
  • Do you spend more time at innovation conferences than producing successful “market ready” innovation projects? This one should be obvious. No one can tell you what will disrupt your business better than you. That is what you are paid to do.  As fast as you can, learn the basics of minimum viable product development and agile methodology – and get busy disrupting.  If you want some help learning or doing – call us because this is what we do best.

Well, that is what we think at least.  But hey, we could be wrong. Let us know one way or the other.

 

To your health,

The Team at imagine.GO

Sources:

Teaching NEXT for Startups
imagine.GO

Teaching NEXT for Startups

As part of my commitment to building an entrepreneurial community where I live in Florida, I will be teaching Steve Blank’s (the world renowned guru for Startups) “Pre-Accelerator” program called NEXT.   NEXT is a five-week “pre-accelerator” program rooted in Steve Blank’s Customer Development methodology. The NEXT program helps founders gain a crucial base of entrepreneurial skills and knowledge. It will focus on customer discovery, big market/big ideas, fundability, communication and go-to-market themes.

 

SWNEXT-1Here are the details:

  • When: Saturdays, September 28—October 26 | 1-4 pm EST
  • Where: University of North Florida Bldg. 15, Rm. 1303
  • Cost: Early Bird Single Ticket – $99 until 9/14| Regular Team Member Ticket (min of 2 tickets) – $99 until 9/21 | Students/Veterans- $75 until 9/19| Prices increase after 9/21
  • In Person Class: Sep 28, Oct 5, Oct 12, Oct 19, Oct 26

So you know, I make no money at this. It is part of my boardship for the non-for-profit iStartJAX and is a labor of love.  I am considered somewhat of a serial entrepreneur.

To learn more about Steve Blank and the value of this method, here is a good video. Blank summarizes the three most important steps in the discipline of startup development.

  1. Business Model Canvasing (Osterwalder, modelH)
  2. Customer Development (NEXT)
  3. Agile Engineering (Minimum Viable Product)

I have written a host of articles on Business Model Canvasing and I am in the process of developing a model and book specifically designed for healthcare, called modelH. You can read more about that here.  For  NEXT, course participants will immerse themselves with Steve’s concepts utilizing Alex Osterwalder’s business model canvas.

I have also written about the use of Minimum Viable Product and its importance to the lean startup. You can read more about that here.

For the customer development piece, we are going to provide hands-on, interactive, and practical application. This is not a theory course – we will be developing our customers for our startup ideas, me included!  As participants, you will be able to:

  • Receive constructive feedback and clarify business assumptions;
  • Discover new customers, customer segments and/or validate existing ones;
  • Generate and test prototypes and revenue models;
  • Amplify your network by interacting with like-minded entrepreneurs who are lean thinkers; and
  • Interact with entrepreneurial mentors of our local community.

I wanted to give you a preview of presentation topics. I will write more about these as we engage. You can see the full details here: Source:

SWNEXT-2Week 01: Customer Discovery

Knowing your customer is the number one priority of any company. As such, we will set out to help you define who you building your product for, their pain points, and what they need. We will introduce customer interviewing and come back to it each week. It is that important to the success of a business model

Week 02: Big Markets, Big Ideas

This week will help bring some reality checks to your idea and how it fits into the “market”.

Week 03: Fundability

Sales from customers are the best funding you can receive, but sometimes outside investment is required to scale a company. But just because you need money does not mean your idea is “fundable.” This week is about getting money for your idea – assuming it is even fundable.

Week 04: Pitching Your Idea

This is about the right way to sell your idea to investors, customers, and the market.

Week 05: Go to Market

Before you launch your product, you should have a basic understanding of models and what go-to-market tactics work and don’t work with each model.  This week is about how to go-to-market successfully.

As you can see, we have a lot of work to do. I hope to see you there.

Register at www.swnext.co/events/jacksonville-next

 

To your health

The Team at imagine.GO

 

Learn from Your Competition
imagine.GO

Learn from Your Competition

What Can You Learn from Your Competition?

I will be giving the keynote at the Pre-Event Kickoff for Jacksonville Startup Weekend today and I am going to speak on a simple, but valuable concept – learning from your competitors. Last year at the Startup Weekend for North East Florida I was honored to give the keynote. I am proud to say that I am slated to give it again this year at the 2013 Startup Weekend on January 25th.

2013 Startup Weekend

Understanding of the Consumer’s Need of Your Product

This is obviously of the utmost importance. If you cannot clearly and simply identify your consumer, you do not have a product. I speak in great depth about this in other BLOG posts so I will not go into detail on it here. But I will refer you to the following blog posts for reference:

Understanding the Market’s Need of Your Product

At Last Year’s Startup Weekend I focused on how start-ups need to consider the larger market ecosystem surrounding their product. At the time, I was the Chief Innovation Officer for GuideWell and we were making plans to build our own start-up accelerator. We also had an active pipeline of ideas that we were watching the market for with the intent that we would make an informed build, buy, or ally decision on how to proceed.

During the discussion at Startup Weekend, I attempted to elevate the attendees thinking about their product so that they considered how it fit inside the prioritized needs of the existing marketplace. This is especially true in the healthcare space, where market entry is difficult and reliance on the existing infrastructure is of utmost importance. I asked them to consider if the product had viability to a large insurer like the one I worked for, and if so, would the best path forward be as a vendor or to outright sell it. I cautioned them that being a product vendor of a multi-billion dollar, highly-regulated company is high on the impossible side for a start-up, and could ultimately bankrupt them trying to get up to compliance with a long list of requirements and regulations. While this can be viewed as very unfortunate, it is nonetheless true.

Instead, I planted a seed for them to consider approaching large companies with the intent to sell their product and its IP in its current state. This form of exit strategy, I believe, will become more viable over the next several years. It allows the entrepreneur to acquire cash and most probably a retained contract to further develop it for the legacy company. Of course, that too comes with its’ own set of difficulties.

Understanding Your Competitors Position Against Your Product

Henry Ford
Henry Ford

I wanted to make some additional points on the need to have a greater understanding of the market and your product’s place in it. Today we will look at what we can learn from our competition. Here again, I advocate that if you cannot clearly and simply identify your competitors, you do not have a product. Even product category inventors like Ford and Apple have competitors.

Henry Ford, the inventor of the automobile, was once quoted as saying “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” While this may contradict the points I make around properly identifying your minimum viable product, at least it points to the fact that there is always some form of competition. I add to that the notion that you can learn a great deal from them.

My absolute favorite writing on this subject is from the blog of Marc Hedlund, the founder and CEO of the failed start-up Wesabe. His cautionary tale is entitled “Why Wesabe Lost to Mint .” Both Wesabe and Mint were/are online financial tools that puts the users’ bank accounts into one place, sets a budget, tracks their goals, etc. In 2009, Mint was acquired by Intuit (the makers of Quicken) for $170 million – not bad. Even with a year head start, users, press, and revenue – Wesabe lost to Mint and closed its doors forever. Why?

Mint

In his post, Hedlund bravely looks at the mistakes he made that led to being beat by Mint. In essence, he boils it down to Mint’s superior efforts in creating a simpler and more automated tool for consumers. Wesabe’s product features went deeper but required more user input and manipulation. Mint’s product features started at a much higher level but gave the appearance to the user of full automation. Hence, Mint was easier to use – so more people used it. By the way, since 2007 Mint has added all of those “deeper” features, and so much more. The lesson here is (in my opinion), it is better to win today with less, and add more tomorrow. This is the heart of the minimum viable concept model.

Hedlund and the team at Wesabe were mistaken in their interpretation of what their consumer’s minimum viable product actually was. They learned it by watching their competitor, but they learned it too late. Today’s start-ups must be nimble enough to quickly recognize market needs and pivot to ensure they always serve the customer best.

Final Words

So I ask all you entrepreneurs out there, particularly in the healthcare space, to take heed of my words and think extensively not only about who are your customers, but who your competitors are and what you can learn from them. You can see the deck I presented with here.

To your health,
The Team at imagine.GO

 

Customers Want What They Want – MVP Helps Get it to Them
imagine.GO

Customers Want What They Want – MVP Helps Get it to Them

Minimum Viable Product

Customers want what they want not what you want for them. As such, the discipline of Minimum Viable Product is one I hope you learn more about soon.  I think Eric Ries says it best, but I wanted to sum up my perspective for you.

MVP as a methodology enables designers to determine whether people want what they are building – in a manner that gauges acceptance and demand – yet preserves capital and time. This is accomplished by allowing designers to validate assumptions about their “product” in two important aspects: its value and the demand for it.

Customer

By definition, MVP is the version of a product that gets built through one cycle of a build, measure, learn loop – as fast as possible. Once the MVP is confirmed (keep in mind, it may take a few iterations), other lean methodologies can be employed to build upon it.

MVP = 3 things: value, use, & speed

Valuable – understand if your product is valued

Make an assumption about the value-exchange created by your product and test it thru iteration until it validated or dropped. Value is defined through the lens of the customer – not what you want for the customer. If no value is confirmed, no product should be created.

Usable – make your product usable and it will get used

MVP asks that you focus on delivering product experience – not on documentation or large feature sets. Usable is more broad a term than just usability. The real test is the usage of the product in the manner you anticipated, not necessarily its first pass at usability. Although you can’t get usage without usability, so be careful not to forsake usability for speed and minimum moving parts. Form and function must appear simultaneously – with minimum function allowing for a simpler form.

Speed – take your product to market quickly

By only building what is deemed most valuable in order of priority to the customer, and progressing through iterative builds, you ensure speed to market and successful releases. When you are wrong, you fail fast (and cheap). MVP assumes iterate until you find the ideal solution. Start small and add on based on customer need.

modelH - Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

So how can you best focus on your (MVP)?

Getting to MVP is actually fairly simple. I suggest this path.

  • Start with the features that allow the “app” to be deployed, and no more. Be disciplined here. Do not let your shovel makers and hole diggers get the better of you. Get to the orange juice quickly. You can work on other recipes soon enough.
  • Launch to your defined early adopters (they are forgiving) and get feedback. Oh yeah, it stands to reason to work with people who want to work with you. If you know people do not like the taste of orange, avoid them. Finds the ones that do and test your MVP with them first. If you cannot “sell” the vision to your early adopters how will you do it with anyone else?
  • Add what is relevant to extend value incrementally. OK, do not let the shovel makers and the hole diggers add a little bit at a time and test it. Make sure you are keeping true to the original “value” part of the app!
  • Now just keeping doing that!

This BLOG by Alexander Osterwalder is very useful for helping you get started.

By the way, you should not use MVP as a start if you are not committed to proceeding with other lean methodologies afterwards that allow for a continued iterative process – lest you lose the “value” in your product. More on this at another time.

 

To your health,

The Team at imagine.GO