Hello Innovator!

Many new entrepreneurs view The Lean Startup and MVP methodology as the bible for startup creation. However, the strategy is coming under fire as more seasoned veterans look back upon their success and realize that, had the followed the methods to a tee, they may well have failed.

In spite of this consternation and questioning of the value of MVPs, they do have a place. As we’ll outline below, an MVP may just be the perfect tool for disruptive innovation.

Here’s what you’ll find:

• This Week’s Article: You’re MVPing Wrong

• Case Study: Snowdevil and the Disruption of E-Commerce

You're MVPing Wrong

The MVP is the Default Launch Strategy

For over a decade, the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) has been the go-to framework for entrepreneurs launching new products. Popularized by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup and in The Startup Owner’s Manual by Steve Blank, the MVP methodology emphasizes launching a product with the bare minimum functionality necessary to gather user feedback.

The idea is simple: instead of spending years building a full-fledged product that may not resonate with customers, startups launch quickly, learn from real users, and iterate their way toward product-market fit.

Smart, right?

The MVP framework has shaped how startups and even large corporations approach innovation by emphasizing rapid testing, cost efficiency, and adaptability. It has led to countless success stories where companies pivoted away from their original idea based on early user insights, refining their products into major industry players.

However, despite its widespread adoption, the MVP model has also come under increasing scrutiny.

The Backlash Against MVP Thinking

Over the past few years, several critiques have emerged challenging the effectiveness of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach. In fact, we’ve written about exactly this in the past.

Key concerns around the MVP strategy include:

Risk of Underwhelming Users
An MVP with insufficient features may disappoint early users, leading to negative perceptions and reduced engagement. The folks at ProductPlan summarize this point perfectly, “If you misinterpret the MVP’s true meaning, you risk introducing users to a product that is just short (and sometimes way short) of their expectations. Worse, if you underwhelm or disappoint this early group of users, in many cases they won’t give your product another chance.”

Failing Too Fast
The primary notion behind the Lean Methodology and the idea of an MVP is abandoning product ideas early and quickly if they fail to gain traction. But, as Ben Silberman, co-founder of Pinterest, points out, “The hard part about the idea of an MVP is that you don’t know what minimum is and you don’t know what viable is.”

Misapplication in Corporate Settings
Applying Lean Startup principles, including the MVP strategy, within established corporations will challenge existing processes and culture. Unless you’re a rare organization that has already adopted the ideals of innovation and built a culture of experimentation, the MVP strategy — which is built around experimentation — will fail.

These critiques suggest that, while the MVP concept remains useful, its execution often fails due to misunderstandings about its intent and limitations.

However, when viewed through the lens of disruptive innovation, MVPs actually align perfectly with breakthrough market creation.

Aligning MVPs with Disruptive Innovation

The theory of disruptive innovation suggests that new markets are developed by launching products that initially appear inferior to incumbent offerings but serve an unmet need in a new or overlooked market.

Stop and read that again.

New markets are created by releasing products, often leveraging existing features and technologies, to solve problems for new audiences who don’t have an alternative solution. Viewed through this lens, a cheaper, faster, product with fewer features that aligns to the needs of a new market sounds a whole lot like an MVP. 

This perspective shifts the focus of MVPs from mere iteration to true market creation:

• Competing Against Non-Consumption: Instead of refining an existing product category, an MVP should solve a problem that customers currently address in inefficient or costly ways—or one they simply cannot solve at all.

• Prioritizing Accessibility and Affordability: Disruptive innovations succeed by being more accessible, often through lower prices, simpler functionality, or a more convenient form factor. MVPs should embrace these principles rather than mimic existing products.

• Iterative Expansion from the Bottom Up: True disruption starts by serving niche markets and improving over time, eventually challenging dominant players. An MVP, when aligned with disruptive innovation, should start in an overlooked market and expand as adoption grows.

The Takeaway

Lately, MVPs have been demeaned as half-baked, uninspired prototypes. They provide an excuse for putting out lackluster products and hoping for the best. But when viewed through the lens of disruption, MVPs are something far more powerful: they are market shapers, business model wreckers, and industry destabilizers.

This is the mindset corporate innovators need to embrace.

MVPs aren’t just for scrappy startups looking to make their mark. They are weapons that can allow enterprises to outmaneuver disruptors. Established companies that build a culture of testing ideas, launching lean, and iterating toward disruption will carve out new revenue streams and reinvent their industries. Or else someone else will do it for them.

Conversely, for entrepreneurs, MVPs remain a potent tool for toppling industry giants. The right MVP—one that serves an ignored market, creates accessibility, and reshapes expectations—can pull the rug out from under corporations that have grown too slow, too rigid, and too comfortable in their process.

The MVP has value, but it must be wielded correctly. It is no longer just a product development tool, rather it is a market disruption mechanism.

The only question that remains is who will wield it first: the startups seeking to disrupt or the corporations wise enough to disrupt themselves?