Sonoma State University
Students Present their Coursework to Conference Participants

The Minimum Viable Product

The minimum viable product is a representation of a product or service idea built using only the minimum set of features needed. After interacting with potential customers and gathering insights about the customer problem or need that the envisioned new product or service would address, founders build a physical or virtual representation of their envisioned solution to the customer's problem or need. The minimum viable product allows founders to get customer feedback about their understanding of the problem faced by customers and whether the envisioned solution is aligned with how customers would like to address the problem or need. After presenting the minimum viable product to potential customers, founders can incorporate customers' feedback and update the minimum viable product representation of the new product or service idea based on customers' feedback. Through an iterative process, founders can create new versions of the minimum viable product and use each new iteration to check their understanding of the customers' problem and degree to which new iterations of the minimum viable product portray a solution to the customers' problem or need that is aligned with how customers would ideally go about solving the problem or need. By getting as much customer feedback as possible prior to building the product or service, the minimum viable product allows founders to incorporate customer feedback as early as possible in the new product/service design process in a cost-effective manner. 

The links below provide additional examples and applications of the minimum viable product: