Pattern description

Customer Development is a formal methodology for building startups and new corporate ventures. It is one of the three parts that make up a Lean Startup (Business Model Design, Customer Development, Agile Engineering).

The process assumes that early ventures have untested hypotheses about their business model (who are the customers, what features they want, what channel to use, revenue strategy/pricing tactics, how to get/keep/grow customers, strategic activities needed to deliver the product, internal resources needed, partners needed and costs.). Customer Development starts with the key idea that there are no facts inside your building so get outside to test them. The hypotheses testing emulates the scientific method – pose a business model hypothesis, design an experiment, get out of the building and test it. Take the data and derive some insight to either 1) Validate the hypothesis, 2) Invalidate the Hypothesis or 3) Modify the hypothesis.

Inventive problems

References

Wikipedia. Customer Development.