The quantitative targets created the motivation to engage in qualitative inquiry and guided us in the questions we asked; this is a pattern we’ll see throughout this book.

They exist to learn how to build a sustainable business.

In enterprise products, it’s often about gaining a competitive advantage by taking a risk with something new that competitors don’t have yet. Early adopters are suspicious of something that is too polished: if it’s ready for everyone to adopt, how much advantage can one get by being early? As a result, additional features or polish beyond what earl

If the company is making good progress toward the ideal, that means it’s learning appropriately and using that learning effectively, in which case it makes sense to continue. If not, the management team eventually must conclude that its current product strategy is flawed and needs a serious change. When a company pivots, it starts the process all o

The lesson of the MVP is that any additional work beyond what was required to start learning is waste, no matter how important it might have seemed at the time.

Minimum viable products range in complexity from extremely simple smoke tests (little more than an advertisement) to actual early prototypes complete with problems and missing features.

Next, using a technique I call the concierge minimum viable product (described in detail in Chapter 6), Caroline could make sure the first few participants had an experience that was as good as she could make it, completely aligned with her vision. Unlike in a focus group, her goal would be to measure what the customers actually did. For example, h

This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: if you cannot fail, you cannot learn.

No amount of design can anticipate the many complexities of bringing a product to life in the real world.