[This post was inspired by my son’s discovery of a product/market mismatch in the Airbus A380. If interested, that story is here.]
I’m a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) fan. I don’t know how many times I’ve quoted Eric Ries’ recounting how Zappos started selling shoes:
- Photograph at a retail shoe store →
- Post online →
- Purchase at a retail to satisfy online demand →
- Ship to customers →
- Learn, refine, repeat
All to test online selling before investing in inventory. Gives you goose bumps, right?
The Twist
Yet I recently blogged about my son making $27.3 billion starting a new airline. In a nutshell, he crushed competition by delivering what customers wanted. And he forecast market problems for the Airbus A380. The A380 — a plane he loved before starting his airline — never won significant penetration in his mythical airline fleet because it didn’t fit the market.
Using Air Tycoon — an iPad simulation game just real enough for children to understand (and possibly too real for many adults) — his drive to win pushed out Airbus capacity and range for Boeing fuel efficiency and point-to-point flexibility.
