Simplify Your Way to MVP

By Don Gooding

I spent last week in Orono being trained on Innovation Engineering, so I paid attention when I received the weekly email missive today from Doug Hall, originator of Innovation Engineering. He was extolling the virtues of simplifying - products, meetings, processes. Focus on the most important things and do them really well, while saying "no" to a thousand extraneous things.

Much easier said than done. I am always making things more complicated.

I connected this notion to the Silicon Valley concept of launching with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). The primary reason for starting with an MVP is risk management: you spend as few development dollars as possible prior to testing the product with real customers ("Fail Fast, Fail Cheap").

 However, I realized that this act of simplifying your product also has the benefit of focusing your attention on a few things your innovative product or service does, and by focusing, you hopefully can do them very well (since that's the only thing your baby product can do at first).

So starting with an MVP is the right thing to do for multiple reasons. ------------ Lean Development and Innovation Engineering are two of the frameworks taught in Top Gun Maine.

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