Hugh Molotsi

This article was first published on LinkedIn . The Lean Startup is a methodology that helps increase our odds of success when working on a venture under conditions of extreme uncertainty. Through systematic, rapid experimentation, we attempt to validate our biggest assumptions before investing the significant time and effort it will take to bring our idea to life. The vehicles for these experiments are   Minimum Viable Products   or MVPs. With an MVP, we build just enough product to learn in-market whether our assumptions about how customers will respond to our venture are correct. Through this learning, we can make adjustments to improve our idea or decide to pivot to a different idea. While the Lean Startup seems like common sense to most people (who doesn’t want to learn whether something will work before making a big investment?), we still hear lots of pushback that goes something like this: “Sure, the Lean Startup works great for software and Internet services,...

This post was originally published on January 1, 2018 at   LeanStartup.co . You’ve probably heard this quote before: “Fall in love with the problem not the solution.” But what does “falling in love with the problem” really mean? Aren’t problems just irritations we’d like to be rid of? So wouldn’t it make sense to love the solutions to these pesky problems? It’s human nature to love solutions, but unfortunately that very tendency can prevent us from coming up with truly delightful solutions. When faced with a problem, we tend to stop ideating as soon as we think we’ve found an answer. This Einstellung Effect keeps us from finding the right solutions since our first ideas are rarely our best ideas. But it gets worse when we move forward into development and inevitably experience customer pushback; we would rather explain those issues away (sometimes even blame the customers) than go back to the drawing board. So, how do we overcome our counterproductive tendency to ...