I think you can read the post and come to a very different conclusion and one that I have written about in the past.
The MVP is a curse for ambitious technology companies that want to grow. In an increasingly transactional world, growth comes from long-term customer happiness. And long-term customer happiness comes when customers adore your product or service and want you to succeed. You should be thinking about what it will take for customers to love you, not tolerate you.
In this case, insights from the data about the agriculture is what customers really need. And if you give it to them in a meaningful and actionable way, they will love it (at least that's the theory). That's radically different than what might be minimally viable (e.g. a ton of data that they could sift through in Excel).
Really think about the type of mindset change it would take. What would it take you to create a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP)?
I agree with a lot of what you write even though I still see value in the idea behind MVPs.
My biggest issue is with the discourse and the stories that are written about. I find most so-called case studies of successful product dev by methodically following the lean process to either be lacking OR highly suspect(due to key missing details).
I was reading the book Nail it before you Scale It and while I wholeheartedly agree with the title of the book and even the theoretical ideas, it was disconcerting to me that a lot of the successful examples cited in the book are companies that no longer exist.
Overall most authors on this topic do a great job of pointing out how a company wasted ton of money on building a product no one wants but the same narrative seems to oversimplify how the company finally achieved success.
The MVP is a curse for ambitious technology companies that want to grow. In an increasingly transactional world, growth comes from long-term customer happiness. And long-term customer happiness comes when customers adore your product or service and want you to succeed. You should be thinking about what it will take for customers to love you, not tolerate you.
In this case, insights from the data about the agriculture is what customers really need. And if you give it to them in a meaningful and actionable way, they will love it (at least that's the theory). That's radically different than what might be minimally viable (e.g. a ton of data that they could sift through in Excel).
Really think about the type of mindset change it would take. What would it take you to create a Minimum Lovable Product (MLP)?
http://blog.aha.io/index.php/the-minimum-lovable-product/