“My biggest learning from the SaaS business simulation experience? Oh, that’s easy and something I am going to take back to the job tomorrow; the company that launches first has the most strategic advantage, and gosh darn it, we should have had that minimum viable product (MVP) before our competitors.”

The concept of using the minimum viable product approach to test a business model is one of the most important concepts to hit the business world in many years. It was a very valuable lesson for my SaaS simulation participants, so I figured it’s nice to do a refresh on the MVP from a Business Acumen perspective.

The Basic Concept: The Minimum Viable Product

In doing some research, I discovered that the concept of a "Minimum viable product" in Business Acumen is a term coined by Frank Robinson and popularized by Eric Ries, founder of the Lean Startup methodology. This is one of my favorite books as the concepts lend themselves to simulation-centric learning. Eric Ries also invented the concept of “persevere or pivot” which we use in every Advantexe digital business simulation round.

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This has been an extra special week. I’ve had the opportunity to interview and survey almost 100 different business leaders about their perspectives on business acumen and business leadership as we start building their digital business simulations that will be part of their fall 2022 virtual and in-person training initiatives.

As so often is the case, we engage in deep dialogues about the topics of the day and the skills needed by today’s leaders to execute strategy. One of the questions that I asked in the interview is, “Which is better, to have great processes in your organization or a culture of great preparation?”

The answers were interesting and worthy of a little thought-provoking blog.

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There is no “playbook” for the new work environment. As we head toward the end of the second quarter and the end of the first half of the year, everything is different, and the challenges are greater than ever. The work environment is in flux with some companies demanding employees “come back to work” while others are telling their employees to stay remote.

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Over the holiday weekend, I used some of my downtime to watch the totally engrossing and very well-produced docudrama on Apple TV called “WeCrashed.” WeCrashed is the dramatization of the rise and fall of WeWork and founder Adam Neumann. If you don’t know the story, WeWork was a “unicorn.” Unicorn is the term used in the venture capital industry to describe a startup company with a value of over $1 billion.

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It’s Memorial Day Weekend in the United States. A time of year when the school year ends, the summer begins, and for many businesses, there is just one month left in the 2^nd quarter and the first half of the year.

As many Americans get ready for the long weekend and the chance to get some well-earned downtime with family and friends, the storm clouds of a significant recession are formulating on the summer’s horizon. By definition, a recession is two consecutive quarters where the gross domestic product (GDP) contracts. The GDP is the sum of all outputs of products and services consumed by an economy. The drivers of the coming recession will be easy to identify as they typically are the function of multiple factors. The recession of 2022 is going to be driven by staggering inflation, the ongoing supply chain disruptions, the continued global COVID pandemic, and the hot spot geopolitical issues that rise up every week.

Many business leaders will take the easy way out and start cutting budgets to make up for lost revenues. By doing this, they will be able to point to the fact that they still made their profit numbers. But, at what cost to the future? Great, you cut Sales, Marketing, and R&D expenses in the short term, but what is the impact in the long term?

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