Sunday, December 29, 2013

Customer Development vs. Product Development vs. Logo Development

The key insight of Steve Blank's work is that the customer development process for a startup should take priority over product development until the required product fit has been found.  This presents an interesting balancing act for a new company.  The product must be developed enough so that customer development can proceed (Eric Ries' Minimum Viable Product), but no more.

What you don't hear discussed is what could be labeled as "Logo Development".  The logo development process encompasses activities that are important to large businesses, but a distraction to startups.  For example, unless the startup's logo is so bad that it frightens small children, no time should be spent improving it until it is clear that it is an impediment to the future success of the business.  Other examples of this type of activity may include business card layouts, aspects of the web site appearance, and even the name of the company itself.

The key test for addresssing any activity is whether it is preventing the organization from moving forward.  For a web-centric company, web design is often crucial.  In fact, the web site may be the product, so web site changes would be properly categorized as product development.  For a hot-dog vendor at sporting events, a web site might not be useful at all (although a mobile app might be).

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