Hi Eric, former IDEOer here. I know you spent some time at IDEO observing how we work. In my time there (2014-2024), it felt like most clients misinterpreted "MVP" to mean "the absolute lowest-effort barely-working code that we can rush out to say we shipped something." When they did manage to ship a low-quality MVP, they had no budget for maintenance or iteration. Basically, they shipped a rushed, crappy product, and some of them concluded "well, Lean, Agile and Design Thinking are all BS. We should go back to waterfall."
Sometimes clients asked IDEO to design under this shitty-MVP model (we generally refused), other times we were brought in to clean it all up.
Why do you think the concept of "MVP" was almost universally misunderstood? And, thinking about Incorruptible, how did the best companies out there internalize it?
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.
Good question - I hope he gets to answer this.
Right now I actually think an MVP should be Maximum Viable Product. Partly because of AI but also because it shifts one's perspective to what Viable means.