How corporates and startups deliver MVPs in 100 days

Strategies, plans and concepts are helpful, but innovations only come about if they are implemented. So, as always: doing is like wanting – but more extreme. The article outlines a new approach from Tech Venture Building, which explains how projects can be delivered and iterated quickly.

Should you wait until an idea is perfect before starting?

Not at all! It’s better to get started and iterating quickly. This is particularly easy to see in startups, since around 90% of startups develop their idea further and usually move far from the original idea (or “cultivate” it).

In essence, it’s primarily about a team’s ability to rapidly launch an idea onto the market, test it and iterate continuously. An area to explore, particularly with new innovations for digital business models, is the analogue and digital changes in the company, and the combination of customer needs with a potential product and a corresponding business model. An area where it is not clear at the beginning what exactly the requirements are and will be. Understandably, this also requires a different approach, and often an agile one.

In daily cooperation with startups and companies, it is noticeable that turning the waterfall concept upside down creates challenges for companies and their purchasing or legal departments in particular, since they are not familiar with the concept of an agile fixed contract or cannot or do not want to process it.

It’s easy and you can get good results with it. Recording the minimal version of the product features in joint workshops (sometimes even drawn visually in the form of a mock-up/prototype) creates mutual understanding and certainty very early on.

Which set-up accelerates implementation of innovation?

Answering this question correctly can save a company millions and depends heavily on the maturity of the organization. Companies soon realize that they need more than an “innovation department” or a “lab”. Regardless of the chosen set-up, the use of cross-functional teams that are oriented towards the customer and the market noticeably improves project success.

We go one step further and combine the best of companies (trust) and startups (speed) and build a self-supporting venture together with appropriate incentives for those involved. This venture has aligned interests, acts entrepreneurially and is responsible for sales, costs and market success.

This model is suitable for application to the following premises:

• Rapid time-to-market is important
• Joint development of an entrepreneurial venture with the ambition of developing independently on the market
• Market-oriented interactive development process in cooperation with end customers
• Financially self-sustaining and profitable after the co-creation phase
• Lessons learned and knowledge transfer back to the mother ship

In 100 days?

We take the MVP (minimal viable product) approach from day one. Just ask yourself: “What is the smallest possible product that a small group of customers will actually pay money for?”

This makes it possible to attract the right people, create a culture of doing and experimenting and, most importantly, to launch innovations that use technology as a catalyst and that are developed together with customers in record time. Depending on the size of the MVP, all in 100 days.

The necessary analogue and digital change happens at the same time – specifically based on an exciting project that develops visibly every day. The rediscovered pleasure of making things often brings great joy and creates meaning. So why not just try it!