EIP: Week Eight

At the start of this week, student teams will reflect on key assumptions critical to the validity of their business models. By reviewing personas, pricing frameworks, and target customers, they assess whether initial hypotheses remain valid, and helps identify assumptions that are specific, measurable, and testable. Where possible, small, cost-effective experiments will be conducted to evaluate these assumptions. The goal is to determine which assumptions hold and which require adjustment using empirical methods. 

The most important step after this is to define the Minimum Viable Business Product (MVBP), that is the simplest version of the product that still provides value to customers, earns revenue, and supports feedback loops. The MVBP should include only essential features to maximise efficiency and learning. In an ideal world, the MVBP would be launched at this stage to gather quantitative metrics on customer adoption, payment, and retention - but teams can explore initial ways to capture interest in lieu of actual launch.

Based on the MVBP, student teams then create a roadmap for adding features and expanding into follow-on markets. This plan should bolster the competitive position of the venture by enhancing product functionality and addressing new market segments. Future quality improvements, upselling, and customisation can be important parts of this strategy.

These steps collectively ensure that product development is both responsive to market needs and strategically positioned for growth, and addition of their outputs to the draft business plan web site should complete its first full version.