1.1.1 MVP vs. Prototype vs. POC
One of the most important questions arising from the last subchapter is how can companies manage uncertainty. In 2011, Eric Ries the author of the book “Lean Startup”, created a framework to accelerate innovation in startup companies. The author defines a startup as “a human institution designed to create something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty” (Ries, 2014, p.31). According to Ries, startups succeed by understanding the needs of their customers. They have to “learn from the customer” and build minimum viable products, which then step by step lead to their marketable end product. Accelerated internal learning cycles, as known from Scrum and Lean Management, can compensate the limited financial resources
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A POC starts with research and exchange of knowledge among a team, it then turns into a concept, which verifies its functionality, before developing the product (Armour, 2017).
Minimum Viable Product is an end product version reduced to its minimal functions, tested in the market through prototypes. By evaluating MVP with the customer, the company can make changes not only on product level, but they can also find better pricing, distribution and sales strategies as well as marketing methods (Eckert, 2017, p.9).
After proving the feasibility of a concept with a POC and developing first MVPs, prototypes stands in focus. Prototypes are interactive models of the end product, visualizing how the product is working in a beta version. Moreover, prototypes aim to discover errors in the early development process and to adapt functionalities to customer’s requirements by testing and iterating (Gassmann, Frankenberger & Csik, 2017, p.73).
1.2 Competition for
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Agile methods are iterative, therefore cost- and time-saving. SMEs and big companies can and according to Erik Ries’ (2017) new book “The startup way” should deploy agile methods. Companies have to build their intern “atomic units of work”, meaning to form internal agile teams and let them experiment, exchange and innovate. “Stability not change is the state that is most dangerous in highly dynamic competitive environments”, so McGrath. The author also points out that arenas, not industries are the places to compete. He defines arenas as connections between customers and solutions, which can be entered faster than thought. To make a parallel to the SMEs, they should not be “relaxed” about traditional protections and barriers to enter the market, because competition devolves around highly intangible and emotional factors (McGrath, 2013, p.45). Therefore, Eckert distinguishes between competition for market share and competition for opportunity share. SMEs tend to use the competition for market share, because it is revenue related and lasts as long as possible. Ordinarily, they try to raise their market share by one-dimensional product- and process innovations. Startups have a different approach. Their initial target is to recognize opportunities
Uncertainty in organizations is a key element to be dealt with in the areas of technology, rules and rituals (Hofstede, 1980). The notion of uncertainty is frequently connected to the perception of environment as the ‘environment is taken to include everything not under direct control of the organization as a source of uncertainty for which the organization tries to compensate’ (Hofstede, 1980: 155). The organization deals with uncertainty in the way in which uncertainties are observed inside the business. According to Torrington, uncertainty avoidance is the degree to which the future is always unknown (1994). Some cultures socialize their participants to accept this idea and take risks. Whereas members of other cultures have been socialized to be made worried or threatened by this and therefore, search for reparation through the ‘security of law, religion or technology’. (Torrington, 1994:
early stages as a new product on the market. If a company has a good
It is really challenging to find and define right chances that are used to improve the process, especially when having insufficient resources; however, organizations usually focus on saving costs as possible as they can. In fact, the best approach while having scarce resources is to find areas of improvement and come up with ideas to improve the proce...
What is the added value of planning for a fast-growing company in an uncertain and dynamic environment?
The Nimsoft project plan will be derived using discovery-driven planning and by discovering what has already been discovered. Discovery-driven planning offers firms an organized approach to planning for new ventures in emerging markets. Given the uncertainty of new disruptive technology markets, discovery-driven planning drives firms to make assumptions about the organization and the emerging markets, then revise these assumptions as the market develops. Unlike conventional approaches, which focus on projections and prematurely define specific targets, discovery-driven planning focuses on meeting assumptions at key milestones and continually planning and adapting while the emerging market evolves. Thus, firms are able incrementally invest in the project.
...f five people to generated new product ideas, among other tasks. One of their roles is to assist business units within 3M to generate new product ideas. They accomplish this by drawing up a plan to create ideas for products that will be marketable ten years in future. Once they have that plan in mind, they backtrack to the present year with new product ideas that are possible with today's technology. They then predict which additional products will be added year by year that will build upon each year's new technological advances to achieve their tenth year vision.
A documentation framework is essential for any large project; hence, RUP describes how to document functionality, constraints, design decisions and business requirements. Use Cases and Scenarios, are examples of artifacts prescribed by the process and have been found to be very effective at both capturing functional requirements and providing coherent threads throughout the development and deployment of the system.
A perceptive company with an ‘agile’ system can rapidly identify an alteration in the environment and gather useful information to quickly respond and avoid a major internal impact. This agility to quickly r...
Sledge, Miles, and Coppage (2008) explain uncertainty avoidance as “the degree of risk aversion” (1670). In a country with high uncertainty avoidance there may be more policies and procedures in place. In a culture with low uncertainty avoidance companies could empower employees to develop new ideas.
The IT strategy for an ecommerce company is not similar to a utility company. For example, the IT strategy for amazon or ebay not similar to that of a power grid company in west coast. IT strategy and budgetary policy is different for Tiffany and United Airlines. Agile leaders constantly think about their IT strategy to ensure IT is in alignment with business strategy of the company. Agile leaders must ensure that knowledge gap is minimal within the organization. By eliminating the knowledge gap, an organization can operate more efficiently and help cut or avoid costs that does not add value to the business. In order to set effective and meaningful IT strategy, leaders should consider designing and architecting an IT organization where IT organizational function, IT architecture and agile development framework are converging well. Another component plays a significant role here which is outsourcing. Agile organization’s decentralized functions along with deeper understanding of applications, software and hardware architecture is advantageous before allocating budget for outsourcing for the agile software development. One way to control IT budget is to ensure IT decisions are business demand driven while demands are well vetted and controlled. Ensure which demands and ideas are quantifiable in terms of value, revenue, efficiency and quality. But at the same time, IT leaders must ensure that
There are many markets, ideas and problems that have to be considered while brainstorming startup ideas. In fact there is such an abundance of aspects; one will undoubtedly feel overwhelmed from time to time. To avoid excessive frustration, it is a great idea to break up the development process into many different sections and complete each task in order. This paper will follow the path in which one should take in the development of their startup.
Concepts play a key role in the development of innovative design solutions. Concepts are used to frame some general design approach. Even though there is no sharp distinction between the process of production and the process of interpretation of designs, an “intended” interpretation usually guides the actions of the designers. Concepts are used to frame some general design approach. In the absence of standard pre-organizing design principles, designers base their search on tentative constructions, or hypotheses which they gradually convert into pragmatic ones. Unlike a scientific hypothesis, which aims at being predictive a design hypothesis aims at being productive: it aims to produce
Lastly, this stage looks at how ideas come to life through production. Therefore, implementation must ensure that design details are put into effect and that the client is satisfied with the final product.
In the beginning lectures, I had no idea that brainstorming and conceptualizing an idea was part of an elaborate process to generate good product ideas. Great inspiration and a creative idea require deep thinking. I have learned that opportunity identification involves looking into the problems first rather than diving headfirst into the solution. Identifying and analyzing customer’s needs, market size, sustainability and scalability allows easy identification of low and high potential concepts. As stated in the article by Tim Brown (Brown, 2008), human-centric approach of innovation should be part of the design process as it gives insights into the life of an everyday person.
Globalization and economic slowdown has made businesses subject to a great deal of uncertainty. In this time of rapid change, economies worldwide change rapidly, new markets open up and old ones change, and demand for products is often uncertain. As such, businesses must be flexible and adaptable in the types of methods that they use...