Auditable – leaders need to be able to spot-check the data. Accessible – readily available and easy to understandģ.

Author Jim Collins calls this “the mirror and the window”.Ģ. The observation is that when numbers go up, leaders attribute it to their actions, whereas when the inverse occurs, and numbers go down, they blame others. Actionable – must have clear cause and effect otherwise, it is a vanity metric. Tune the engine from baseline to ideal.ġ. Use an MVP to establish real data on where the company is now.Ģ. Vanity metrics should be replaced by 'innovation accounting', which encompasses the following:ġ. A head start is rarely large enough to matter, and time spent in stealth mode away from customers is unlikely to provide a head start. Sooner or later, a successful start-up is going to face competition. Customers do not care how long it took to build they only care if it serves their needs. The MVP is not the slick, flawless and polished version you dream about. The MVP is designed to test the fundamental business hypothesis – not product design and technical questions. He proposes the way to overcome this is through the minimal viable product (MVP). Reis notes that the problem with strategic plans is not that they aren't well-designed but rather that the data and assumptions they were based on are wrong. This archetype remains a hypothesis until the strategy has shown that the business can serve the customer in a sustainable way.

Ries suggests creating a 'customer archetype' to humanise the proposed customer and guide daily decisions. The focus must always be on solving the customers’ problems. The difference between those that fail and those that succeed is that the latter had the tools, foresight and ability to see which parts of their plan were working, and which were not, so they adapted accordingly.

Can you build a solution for that problem? STEER If there was a solution, would they buy it?Ĥ. Do consumers recognise that they have the problem you are trying to solve?Ģ. Growth hypothesis tests how customers will discover a product or service.ġ. Value hypothesis tests whether a product or service really delivers value to customers once they are using it'. This learning is aimed at testing the leap-of-faith assumptions: Everything a start-up does is an 'experiment designed to achieve validated learning'. We must ask “Should we build this product?” not “Can we build this product?”.

Eric ries the lean start up