Customer Development: A Minimum Viable Learning Product
A couple of months ago I was given the opportunity to review some early work on an e-book by Brant Cooper (Market by Numbers) and Patrick Vlaskovits. It was rough at the time but the idea of simplifying the very meaty 'Four Steps to the Epiphany' by Steve Blank would be a nice thing to add to the available materials in the Lean Startup community. I had a great conversation with Brant at the time and looked forward to the completion of their work. At the end of April they officially launched their book "The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development - A Cheat Sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany" at the Startup Lessons Learned Conference in San Francisco on April 23! Last week I received a free copy for review. Over this past weekend I read through the 73 page book and was very impressed on this nicely written, concise and easily referenced content. The e-book focuses the Customer Discovery aspect of Customer Development, which is arguably the most important step for startups.
It's also much more than just a summary of The four Steps by bringing in other concepts from thought leaders in the space including Eric Ries, Sean Ellis, Brant Cooper and others. While you can find all of this information scattered across many articles and blog posts over the past couple of years, it is really nice to have it consolidated in one place in a well organized format. It is much more of what I would all an MVLP - A minimum viable learning product. For example - just recently i wanted to introduce the concepts of customer development to a member of my team. I gave her my copy of The Four Steps which she is currently wading through, however, from a learning perspective The Four Steps is way more than an MVLP. This e-book is much closer to that model and much more digestible for those looking to understand the basic and get started. I also believe it would be a great introduction to managers and practitioners that may not be directly involved in Customer development but still need a good understanding of the concepts.
While customer development is optimal for use in startups and chaotic environments I would contest that every business should operate as if they were under these conditions. And while I agree with the authors when they say that these concepts can become more difficult to implement in a pure way the further you are down the path you are in the development of the business, they can still be very useful in any organization. Minimally it can serve as a great mental model to help move towards customer centricity. Take for instance a large mature organization: An internal IT shop could use these concepts on all software projects, and no matter what aspect of a business you are working in you can always get out of the building more and better understand your customers and market. After all, the market doesn't stand still and its moving faster than ever - why not be ready and on top of your game. As I heard Eric Ries say in a recent presentation 'Disruption is coming to an industry near you'. Be prepared with Customer Development.
