Principle of MVP

The concept of MVP – or minimally viable product – has been around for decades; first introduced by Eric Reis, of Lean Startup fame, it describes the set of features and minimal performance that are required to take a product to market.  This allows a product to be tested by users in the real world, providing vital feedback to multidisciplinary development teams and enabling future iterations of the product design to be refined to address genuine market requirements.

The benefits of Lean Design and MVP

Lean startup methodology suggests that an MVP can be taken to market quickly and cheaply, to inform and derisk future, more costly development and marketing activities of the final product.  As such, it’s a tempting proposition for any startup that is burning cash and seeking further investment: get something on the market, show it works and then improve it based on real world feedback.

However, in the world of medtech, where the regulatory hurdles are high, the path to achieving market clearance is long, and user adoption cycles can be even longer, it’s hard to conceive how the cost model for launching an MVP stacks up.  A further hazard is that, due to cost pressures, many MVP projects become more about passing regulatory milestones in the shortest possible time; interesting approaches to meeting user and patient needs are sidelined.  

Derisking by developing a Hypothetically Viable Product (HVP)

The core principle of MVP is to reduce development risk by testing market acceptance with users.  In medtech, I’d argue that it’s firstly worth considering where the greatest point of risk is in the plan, which will then inform what must be tested as early as possible.  Regulatory compliance is a given so what other elements of the product need to come together to be commercially viable?

But how to test ideas with users when the product doesn’t yet exist?  Well, a major advantage of working in a professional use market (vs consumer) is that users are highly educated and often experts in best practice.  Therefore, developing user journeys, based on publicly available information, can stimulate the creation of hypothetically viable product (HVP) specifications to then explore with potential users.   At an early stage, these discussions don’t have to be particularly structured – by asking smart questions and listening carefully to a potential user about how they work, what causes them the most pain (and who else is affected by any change in how, where and who the work is done), you can unlock valuable insights to direct future product specification.  Understanding the very real barriers to adoption is also a very fruitful area to explore.  

If you’d like help to develop or test new value propositions in medtech or diagnostics or to develop a more detailed view of your target market, please get in touch to set up an exploratory call.