What Your Old Business Degree Did Not Teach You
Lean Innovation in the 21st Century
As you know innovation is imperative to succeed in business, especially new businesses and startups. So what does Lean Innovation mean?
Lean Innovation is a philosophy of not letting perfection get in the way of progress. Many times we try and make the perfect product and in the hunt of perfection we actually slowing our progress. The core of this philosophy is that it says that 20 percent of the products features (which is also known as the minimum viable product) delivers 80 percent of the benefits sought by the consumers. Lean Innovation is a simple 3 step process that anybody can use
1. Identify the minimum viable product (the 20 percent)
2. Develop a version rapidly and test it out with consumers. Best to do it in the real world. Get feedback
3. Repeat until you have a product your consumers you testing with, are basically saying yes, I would buy that please take my money now. If the feedback is negative. Do not give up. Pivot your whole concept (or business model) and start again
This is different to what we thought at university and what old companies were doing . We are thought to make this super product that has every feature you can think of . This is all done with no customer feedback at all. What we then end up with is a product that’s is too expensive, too complicated, too late in the market and too different from what customers want? No wonder why so many startups failed all these years…
Lean Innovation is an incremental and iterative process where you get customer feedback on every feature you put on the product. In the end you left with a product that has all the features a customer wants. So when you do launch your final product it has all the features that customers are willing to buy. You have a willing customer base and you on your way to success .
Another underlying theme of lean innovation is learning and the philosophy places a lot of emphasis on learning. It focuses on the most important features with a rapid cycle of trial and error in a real life situation. It’s quite important to have a way of storing the learning that takes place so that it can be analysed and to create a time line of changes made to the product
