Walks on West Cliff
Not All MVPs Are Equal, Nor Should They Be
🎙️ Featuring Jake L. Olsen, former Staff NPI Mfg. Eng. at Intuitive Surgical
On a recent Walks on West Cliff, Jake and I dug into a topic that comes up in almost every early-stage hardware and medical device program:
🤔 What does minimum viable REALLY mean, and how minimum is too minimum?
Most people think of an MVP as a minimum functional version of a product that’s good enough to test market demand, usability, or competitive positioning. But in regulated industries like medical devices, where product lifecycles can stretch 7 to 15 years, there is another MVP that matters just as much.
⚙️ The Minimum Viable Process
As Jake put it, the “P” in MVP might as well stand for Process. Because alongside product design, operations teams must develop a manufacturing process that is:
- Compliant with FDA requirements
- Safe for patients
- Good enough on cost
- Not tuned for volume manufacturing and yields
- In other words: JUST GOOD ENOUGH
🔒 The Non-Negotiables
In the medical device world, some elements are not optional:
- Patient safety
- Regulatory compliance
⚖️ The Balancing Act
Over nearly two decades of developing early-stage medical device processes, Jake has had to strategically balance:
- Development speed vs. product robustness
- Risk vs. resource constraints
All while designing processes that could be upgraded if the product was successful enough to justify future investment.
🔍 So Why Aren’t All MVPs Equal?
Because they depend on:
- The stage of the company
- Product complexity and regulatory requirements
- Available resources
- Risk profile for users and patients
Sometimes doing too much too early can actually slow down a product’s introduction. Jake shared a line from one of his best managers, “If you get an A+ on an FDA audit, you did way too much work.” The underlying truth is powerful: your minimum viable process needs to be JUST GOOD ENOUGH.
📊 The Real-World Scoreboard
During his time at Intuitive Surgical helping launch the Ion robotic bronchoscopy platform, Jake developed several minimum viable processes. Many of those processes remained stable and effective well beyond launch, and supported hundreds of thousands of procedures.
The scoreboard tells the real story:
- The team hit the right balance of “good enough”
- Life-saving technology reached patients faster
- Lung cancer mortality was addressed more effectively and safely
🧠 Final Thought
We owe it to our customers, and in this case, to doctors and patients, to move fast enough to validate real needs while staying compliant and safe, and avoid overbuilding too early.
Processes need to be JUST GOOD ENOUGH
❓ What does MVP mean in your organization?
