Making Better Business Decisions by Alan Smith [Mind the Product]

How well do you know validation? This is the question that Alan Smith, co-founder of Strategyzer, helps to answer in this ProductTank Toronto talk.

He shows us:

• The new way to create a business plan
• How to use tools and frameworks

Watch the video to see Alan’s talk in full. Or read on for an overview of his key points.

The New Way to Create a Business Plan

Alan explains that once before if you wanted to take an idea and turn it into a product or business, the first step would be to create a long and detailed business plan. Now that’s no longer the case. Creating a product or business can be divided into two phases – the search and execution phases.

The search phase is then broken down into design and testing. Once you’ve begun to design your product, you can test your hypotheses to make sure you’re building the correct product. After that, you can begin to execute by bringing a product to market.

How to Use Tools and Templates

Strategyzer is known for creating some of the best tools and templates used in developing products today, including the business model canvas and the value proposition canvas.

In the second part of his talk, Alan illustrates how to best use these templates to validate an idea. With some participation from the audience, they take on the roles of co-founders of the Owlet startup and map out the business models and value propositions for their baby monitoring sock. They go through a number of different hypotheses and see where pivots need to be made as they validate different hypotheses.

The key takeaways from this talk are that in the search phase, there is a lot of uncertainty and risk that’s undertaken when launching a new product. Using validation helps to reduce this uncertainty as the product moves towards execution. Also, business model and validation tests are not a one-time thing, product people should continuously be using them throughout the lifecycle of the product to determine future pivots.

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Source: Mind the Product https://www.mindtheproduct.com/making-better-business-decisions-by-alan-smith/