The Titan submersible implosion, innovation and MVPs.

Well, the reaction to this post should be interesting.

About 2014, I asked a former MBA student of mine, Scott Morley, who at the time was a part of ALung Technologies, a technology for treating patients with acute respiratory failure, to do a presentation about new product development. The audience was my University of Pittsburgh Blast Furnace Startup Accelerator cohort.

At one point Scott paused and said (I paraphrase, quoting from memory) 'you know when you are dealing with medical devices its not like you can follow all the agile prinicples like a minimum viable product; you cant insert a MVP in someone's heart and see how goes so you can learn from it'.

Ouch.

OK, let me back up. I know what an MVP is (or I think I do) . I watched Dan Olsens terrific webcast on defining an MVP and the range of what people believe they are or aren't. And Dan so well states, there are believers all along the spectrum.

But most of these discussions--even Dan's--all are about software products. What about physical products? Hmmm...not alot written about how physical products should do an MVP. There is this wonderful article 'Apples Minimum Viable Product' which is a great read about how Apple started with a motherboard. Point taken. And certainly in the world of 3D printing more things can be tested in an expensive manner.

My all time favorite MVP for a physical product with a service is this one about a vending machine for coffee. Very creative way to test the assumptions and hypothesis. In the Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) industry, the language 'test and learn' has been adopted to provide the same benefits of an MVP. So,lots of verticals and industries have adopted this idea of buidling something to test the assumptions and validate them so you can cheaply --and quickly--get to market by reducing the risks. Good stuff.

So what about certain types of products that are heavily regulated, where safety is key, such as what Scott Morley discussed at my Blast Furnace cohort, or what we witnessed with the Titan submersive. Much has been stated and written about this tragic event, the inventor of the submersive, the company, and the design of the vessel by people much smarter and more informed than me.

Organizations have long hated regulations. Here in the United States we have long heard the cries for dergulations-- 'the free market' needed to be allowed to work unemcumbered, and regulation 'red tape' would kill innovation and/or escalate costs. So here is what was stated by the OceanGate team in a 2019 company blog post, where OceanGate criticized the third-party certification process as one that is time-consuming and stifles innovation.

“Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation," the post said.

Beyond the obvious disaster and loss of life, OceanGate is giving innovation a bad name. Certainly they are giving MVPs with their approach to their innovation process and the tian submersive.

With the widespread advent of agile methods in 2001, companies have valued speed over anything else. However risk mitigation has always been at the heart of good innovation. But as digital transformation overtake organization and software eats the world, we have brushed aside some of the innovation industries great risk mitigation methods such as phase-gate methods. Why would we need them? And Testing? Certification? Let's just build it and see what happens and what we learn. Even in software/digital products, some MVP aficiandos call for testing your riskiest assumption, which is the most uncertain and critical factor for your product's success.? If you think your sub could blow up with five people on it, maybe you should test for that possibility. And certification could help.

Admittedly for some products and companies require less risk mitigation, and that is OK. When they were startups, Facebook, Airbnb, Uber and Dropbox all used MVPs to get going and reduce commercial risk. They all could be tested with a website and a landing page. But even these products are open to cybersecurity risks at a minimum that should be considered.

In an interview OceanGate CEO and founder Stockton Rush stated "I think it was General MacArthur who said: 'You're remembered for the rules you break,'" Rush said, smiling. The CEO acknowledged that he'd "broken some rules" with the Titan's manufacturing but was confident that his design was sound. "I think I've broken them with logic and good engineering behind me. Carbon fiber and titanium? There's a rule you don't do that," he said. "Well, I did."

Sure, we have all seen the reward being in the risk; and certainly the biggest risk a person can take is to do nothing. But the purpose of an MVP is to test the assumptions--and associated risks --associated with your offering. And in products/services where safety is one of the risks, the MVP has to take that into consideration at some stage. Or consequences will result.

Bad news early is good news.