Page 105 - AC/E's Digital Culture Annual Report 2015

AC/E Digital Culture Annual Report 2015105• Customer Discovery• Customer Validation• Customer Creation• Company Building16To this end, it is essential to go out and talk to potential customers, carrying out qualitative experiments and research. It is a laboriousand very important stage in which technical entrepreneurs are the least accustomed andtend to take refuge in the office to develop their product; however, in order for the product to be successful, it is necessary to spend a lot of time in contact with customers.At an initial stage we should not talk to possible clients to obtain lists of product specifications, but rather to find out whether our product vision has customers who are willing to buyit. At this stage we can use the philosophyof Minimum Viable Product (MVP)17 as an alternative to questionnaire systems, applying the Lean Startup method.To incorporate this methodology properly a product developmentteam and customer development team are needed.The aim is to find the early adopters, customers who are generally at the forefront of technology or are simply more inclined to our proposition owing to evident needs and do not mind acquir- ing unfinished products still at the test stage.The idea is thus to validate the solution we have in mind, which can mean simple experiments based on bringing our potential customers face- to-face with prototypes such as storytelling, or initial product visualisations (wireframes). What we seek is to convert initial business model hypotheses into certainties on the problem and the proposed solution.On the basis of the initial customer identifica- tion, with the product defined and the business model at the initial stage, validation is more than necessary: we are talking about first pre- sales. If everything goes as it should, this stage witnesses the creation of new customers thatwill eventually demonstrate and take us to the generation and establishment of the pillars of our company. At this final stage we are no longer seeking a business model but implementing it.Finally, in order to incorporate this methodology properly, we need a product development team such as the so-called Customer Development Team, working in parallel to ensure that startup goes smoothly. Thanks to its resemblance,with reservations, to a pure business creation approach, we can understand that its application in established companies is in turn highly effective when we are developing new business lines, that is, by generating intrapreneurshipCan anyone then apply these methods and in any environment, even culture? The answeris yes, but under certain conditions. We will examine this in the next and last section of the article.Juan Gasca and Jose Manuel Jarque Muñoz