Minimum Viable Product
Definition
The simplest version of a product that can be released to early adopters to validate core assumptions and gather feedback with minimal development investment. The MVP concept, popularised by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup, enables founders to test product-market fit iteratively before committing significant capital to full product development.
Complementary Terms
Concepts that frequently appear alongside Minimum Viable Product in practice.
The value created through investment in design activities including product design, UX design, service design, and architectural design. Design capital improves customer experience, brand perception, and product-market fit, and is a key intangible asset category in the Opagio framework.
A style of private equity investment focused on mature, profitable, or near-profitable companies seeking capital to accelerate expansion without ceding majority control. Growth equity investors typically target businesses with proven product-market fit and strong intangible asset bases, providing capital for scaling operations, entering new markets, or funding acquisitions.
The plan a company uses to launch a product or enter a new market, encompassing target customer definition, value proposition, pricing, distribution channels, and sales approach. An effective GTM strategy converts product-market fit into scalable revenue.
The degree to which a product satisfies strong market demand. Achieving product-market fit means customers are actively seeking and deriving value from the product, evidenced by organic growth, high retention, and willingness to pay.
The application of data analysis techniques to human capital data in order to improve workforce planning, productivity, and talent management decisions. Workforce analytics enables organisations to quantify the return on investment in training, recruitment, and employee development — key components of intangible capital formation.
Sequential rounds of venture capital financing that follow the seed stage. Series A typically funds scaling after product-market fit; Series B accelerates growth and market expansion; Series C and beyond fund further scaling, internationalisation, or pre-IPO preparation.
A controlled regulatory environment established by a financial regulator that allows fintech companies to test innovative products, services, or business models with real customers under relaxed regulatory requirements and close supervisory oversight. The UK Financial Conduct Authority pioneered the concept in 2016, and sandbox programmes now operate in over 50 jurisdictions worldwide.
A variant of the multi-period excess earnings method used to value customer relationship intangible assets, which analyses the business from the perspective of a hypothetical distributor that owns only the customer relationships and licenses all other assets from the operating entity. The distributor method simplifies contributory asset charge estimation by modelling a lean distribution business rather than the full operating entity.
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