Value Development
I’m reading Steve Blank at the moment. Inspired by this article on the Lessons Learned blog, I flicked through this slide deck, which persuaded me to buy his book on Customer Development.
Reading the book, I’m nodding constantly as he sets out a formalised workflow for testing whether you have a market, seeing if people will actually buy your crazy idea, then (and only then) scaling up once you know you’ve got a product that sells.
Now, in the last half decade, we’ve seen business change for ever. As Umair Haque repeatedly points out, today’s economy is all about creating value: thick, tangible, sustainable value for society (not just your shareholders).
So, as I’m nodding along, thinking about how the theory applies to my business ideas, I’m also thinking about how the new climate applies to the book, which, after all was written in 2005.
The thought occurs, what about a formalised methodology for value development? What would that look like? I’d be interested in your thoughts but as a very quick starter for ten, here’s Blank’s Customer Development methodology transposed:
The idea would be that this is a definable, practical process you could repeat to take very different ideas from “what if…” inspiration to sustainable execution.
Value Discovery
- what are society’s top problems?
- how does your idea solve them?
- what’s a typical day in life for each of the relevant stakeholders?
- who does your idea involve? draw an involvement chart
Value Validation
- will people actually do this? is your proposition strong enough to actually persuade real people to change their behaviour?
- have you developed a repeatable ‘value creation’ roadmap that you can implement again and again?
Value Creation
- scale it
- create demand
Value Building
- exit stage left and let someone organised take over
Just a lunchtime sketch. I wonder whether someone (e.g.: from London Creative Labs) would care to develop it?
