Comment by eries
5 hours ago
Man, "universally misunderstood?" That's harsh.
I don't think you can put an idea out into the world without understanding that some people are going to willfully misunderstand it. We live now, especially in the age where literally ignorance is optional. When you see someone who misunderstands what an MVP is, you know that they haven't spent even five minutes reading the Wikipedia page or made any effort to try to understand it. I don't consider such people to be good faith interlocutors, and therefore I don't really think the fact that they criticize or don't understand the concept is that relevant to the rest of us who are capable of thinking for ourselves.
At the end of the day, I try to lay out in my first book the reasons why the theory that gives rise to MVP and the rest of the Lean Startup makes sense, is logical, and is consistent with a set of first principles. As a result, that theory is capable of making predictions which you can test for yourself.
Writing now for other founders who might encounter this page: If you look elsewhere in this thread, you will find lots and lots and lots of entrepreneurs who are saying how much they found these concepts helpful. You shouldn't do it because other people said so. Rather, you should take that as inspiration to think for yourself, try it, and see if the theory strikes you as valid.
Thanks for the reply, and I didn't intend it to sound as harsh as it came off! I did encourage our clients to actually read The Lean Startup to understand the full context of the MVP concept, and with the benefit of that context, we did use the term "MVP" to describe initial builds. The frustration I describe came mostly from secondary (not day-to-day) client stakeholders, who probably got their information about MVPs by scanning a LinkedIn post (okay, maybe that's harsh).
I'm legitimately excited to read Incorruptible, because in all honesty, 10 years of working with the Fortune 500 left me pessimistic about the ability of $1B+ companies to successfully do anything new. There were exceptions (some of my friends came up with Pay It Plan It for Amex), but they were rare enough that it was hard to come up with themes or patterns that connected them. I'm so curious to hear what you've learned by talking to companies that have been able to avoid ossification and continually reinvent themselves.
Eager to hear what you think after you've had a chance to read it. Do let me know.