[raganwald]

You're asking the wrong people.

1. Read "The Lean Startup."

2. Find the cheapest and fastest way to test whether potential customers think you should build it for them. For example, you could make a fake product web page with a "try free" button and count the number of people who click the button.

Asking us is not lean. Asking customers is not lean. Testing customers != asking them. Building it is too expensive a test to be lean.

Gotta run, can't put more words into this, sorry!

[drharris]

Just because Lean is the buzzword of 2012 doesn't mean it's the right way to do it. This comment wouldn't have made sense two years ago, and probably won't make sense two years from now. Seems a little wrong to say that because it's not Lean, it's wrong. Let them find their own way, "wrong" or not.

[RyanZAG]

Agreed. I can get behind the concept of MVP, but 'lean always' just doesn't have the evidence. Was Henry Ford 'lean'? IBM's big mainframe business... 'lean'? Were windmills 'lean'?

Nearly all big inventions are the opposite of lean - some people went and built something that nobody had thought of using before and those inventions took off. If you had just put up a survey asking people if they want a 'noisy, horseless carriage' you would have gotten a resounding no.

A lack of clicks on a random signup page with just a blurb doesn't imply the product will fail in the market. It could imply that users don't understand the value or a number of other things.

However, a MVP failing pretty much does imply failure, so I'd personally say throw out 'lean' and stick with MVP for anything 'pushing boundaries'.