Desirability, Feasibility, and Viability 2.0 - Beyond the Current Definition

It is current design thinking practice to look at desirability, feasibility, and viability, as the sweet spot for innovation. The original concept thereby tries to look at whether customers want a product/service (desirability), whether it can be done from a technological point of view (feasibility), and whether the company should do it, whether it’s a good business decision (viability).

In The Art of Opportunity, we proposed a stakeholder oriented approach, looking at three types of value propositions:

1. The Customer Value Proposition
2. The Firm Value Proposition
3. The Ecosystem Value Proposition.

Our thinking was that any strategy, business model, offering, etc. needs to provide value for all parties involved to be successful. (For more details, see this article.)

This post sparked me to reconceptualise these 2 approaches and try synthesising them into one. The idea is basically to say that desirability, feasibility, and viability need to be considered for each and every stakeholder.

Consider the classic example of the Concorde: Although being able to travel from London to New York in 2.5 hours was very desirable for customers, not many were able to afford the high prices (The return was $20’000 in 2000, which would be about $30’000.- today). Hence, although it was desirable, it was not viable for customers.

Combining the 2 approaches could look something like this:

What do you think? Does this make sense?