User-centered product development using lean start-up by valantic

Successful businesses create innovative products and business models that offer practical solutions and inspire their markets. The key to this is to consistently align services and products with customer needs. Neglecting this can increase the risk of a “waterfall” effect, leading to longer product roll-out cycles and soaring development costs. Lean start-up provides a framework for streamlining successful new product development and company foundation. 

Lean start-up – the key to streamlined processes 

Lean start-up is an approach that emphasizes early market testing and continuous learning. Much like design thinking, it places users at the core of all considerations. At valantic, we apply proven innovation methods, including personas, customer journeys, and business model generation, within this framework. 

The iterative lean start-up process at valantic 

1. Understand the customers’ problem: Clearly formulating the problem is a crucial step toward finding a successful solution. 
2. Design the solution: Determine how your product can create value and contribute to solving the identified problem. 
3. Describe the business model: Define the target group and use the business model canvas to develop a functional business model. 
4. Select critical risks: Systematically identify and evaluate potential risks by formulating testable hypotheses. 
5. Build a minimum viable product (MVP): Begin with a product vision and develop the MVP, containing the minimum features needed to achieve validated learning about your customers. 
6. Testing with customers: Use experiments with the MVP to test the risks most critical to the achievement of the product vision. 
7. Evaluate feedback: Analyze the feedback and discussions with customers to gain insights. 
8. Update the business model: The business model should be adaptable. It’s important to quickly incorporate market feedback to make necessary improvements.