What Does the Minimal Viable Product Actually Help Us to Develop? Three Routes Toward a Design Methodology

The Minimal Viable Product (MVP) functions as a customer discovery method in the Lean Startup approach. But what does that entail? What does the MVP actually help us to describe or develop? And can the MVP be refined to become a more rigorous design methodology? In this paper, the author draws on design research to describe three ways that the literature positions MVPs, each implying a different route for developing the MVP methodologically.