If you believe that lean startup methods lead to cheap products and companies, or that lean startup companies don’t think big, think again. The digital revolution, globalization and technology platforms have forced companies to bring products to market faster than ever to stay alive, and even behemoths such as Experian are benefiting from a lean startup philosophy.
In light of the numerous misconceptions about lean startups, I thought it would be useful to clarify a few things for entrepreneurs and innovators. That’s how I came to talk about the subject with Eric Ries, consultant, and author of The Lean Startup, during Lean Startup Week in November.
Flush with fallacies
The lean startup methodology is an approach for getting new products — and startups — to market using the fundamentals we learned in science class. Many hear the term “lean” and assume it means a startup that frequently cuts corners to save time and money. That’s incorrect. Instead, a lean startup creates efficiency by minimizing wasted resources.
The ultimate goal? Streamlining the process for bringing a big idea to market.
Ries is one of the true champions of the approach and is a goldmine of information for anyone interested in avoiding the costly pitfalls that occur in the critical early stages of product development. This was actually the third time I’d had the opportunity to interview him; our last discussion covered marketing’s role in the lean startup process.
Our most recent discussion focused on what “lean startup” means in today’s business climate and how most entrepreneurs and corporate leaders have a faulty understanding of the approach. Here are a few of the misconceptions Ries described to me about how entrepreneurs still view lean startups.
Misconception 1: “Lean” means you’re cheap or not thinking big.
Customers often perceive early iterations of products as “cheap” or, at best, inadequate. In reality, the first iteration of a product — the minimum viable product — is a practical way to test an innovation with the consumer before fine-tuning the process.
Measuring and learning early in the development process ultimately saves startups time and resources. With my own organization’s venture companies, for example, we define an MVP (minimum viable product) as the smallest amount of design and code necessary to conduct the first product or market experiment while maintaining a positive user experience.
Customers might not know what they want, Ries said, but hypothesis-testing with your audience is still valuable.
Let’s assume the problem you’re trying to solve is how to make it easier for people to…