Remember, we’re focused on beginnings.
- How can we turn hazy ideas into something concrete and real?
- How can we make small things grow?
- Where do we start?
During these early periods, some brands find themselves focused on the idea of a minimum viable product or “MVP”. These are bare-bones products that are just good enough to send into the market for testing and feedback.
This term — MVP — has been misconstrued. It’s often an excuse for creating “minimum” products that are incomplete, and often, near-sighted. They lack a designing principle and fail to communicate values of any kind. These products are thrust, worthless, onto the world.
How can we do better?
By moving beyond the idea of an “MVP” and towards the concept of a minimum designing principle.
A minimum designing principle is the smallest, tangible version of your idea that communicates its values.
Importantly, an “MDP” does not start with the actual product. It starts with values — the ones that are found in your designing principle or brand vision statement.
Think back to Apple. If their goal was to deliver a computer to the masses (and nothing more) they could have quickly cobbled together some box-ey, yet functional, object.
Instead, Apple started with their designing principle. Their true goal was to bring the power of personal computing to the masses — recall: personal + computing — and their resulting products embodied this ethos.
They were more than just functional. They were whimsical and begged to be touched. These friendly shells served as trojan horses for the power that lay beneath them… computing power that was, at last, delivered to everyday users.
Had Apple focused on launching “MVPs” into the market (focused on product features alone) they would not have been successful.
Instead, during their prime, they released products that were conduits to Apple’s values, which came ready to delight users out of the box.
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What are the necessary building blocks for turning your own ideas into a minimum designing principle? It’s different for every product, but a good starting place is:
- A designing principle
- A name that embodies that designing principle
- A structure — think a product, plot line, team composition, etc. — that reflects the designing principle’s values
- An initial distribution plan that extends the values laden in the designing principle
Notice the words chosen above. We start with the designing principle and reflect, embody, and extend it into logical names, structures and distribution channels. This is how we grow while maintaining a sense of cohesion.
If Speedland (see chapter two) were our product, this framework would look like the following:
- Designing principle: the world’s first hyper-performance trail shoe
- Name: Speedland (ie. speed + land)
- Product structure: The product construction and appearance reflect the values of hyper-performance running and venturing into the wild
- Distribution plan: Lean into values and the trail-running community via well-selected ambassadors and sponsored events
Think hard about the initial components of your minimum designing principle.
These are the first steps to turning your ideas into real and growing products, while maintaining their focus and cohesion.
Crafting a minimum viable starting point.
