Value Hypothesis | Glossary

Definition:

A Value Hypothesis tests if a product is valuable to potential customers. There are successful startups who no longer have a valuable product. These companies die. A value hypothesis determines if a customer should adopt a product into their lives. A value hypothesis turns a value statement into a question.

A hypothesis is an assumption that can be validated through experimentation and observation. Similarly, a Value Hypothesis should be a testable statement that can be validated or refuted when facing your prospective partner.

Further Reading:

Book: The Lean Startup -by Eric Ries

Leading Continuous Change | Book Series

Overview:

Most change efforts fail because most change methods are built to deal with single challenges in a nice, neat, linear way. But leaders know that today, pressures for change don’t come at you one at a time; they come all at once. It’s like riding a roller coaster: sudden drops, jarring turns, anxious climbs into the unknown. Drawing on his years of experience at the Center for Creative Leadership and Columbia University, Bill Pasmore offers a four-part model and four mindsets that allow leaders to deal with multiple changes simultaneously without drowning in the churn.

Pasmore says, the first step is to Discover which external pressures for change are the most necessary to address. The key here is to think fewer—step away from the buffet of possibilities and pinpoint the highest-impact options. Then you need to Decide how many change efforts your organisation can handle. Here the mindset is to think scarcer—you have only so many people and so many resources, so how do you best use them? Once you’ve figured that out, it’s time to Do—and here you want to think faster. Streamline processes and engage in rapid prototyping so you can learn quickly and cost-effectively. The last step is to Discern what worked and what didn’t, so think smarter—develop metrics, identify trends, and make sure learnings are disseminated throughout the organisation.

Author:   

Bill Pasmore

Published In:

17 August 2015