One key to successful innovation, a growing body of innovation thinkers believe, is trial-and-error experimentation. Proponents of the Lean Startup methodology urge innovators to create a minimum viable product (MVP)--something that solves a customer’s problem adequately but isn’t perfectly polished--and use it as a vehicle to gather critical in-market learning. The approach makes many executives inside big companies nervous. After all, experiments can fail, which implies taking on a risk that could blow back in some way to harm the core business. And in some industries even developing a good enough product is time consuming and expensive.
Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wright_brothers#mediaviewer/File:Kitty_hawk_gross.jpg
