#productdevelopment People argue all the time about what a "minimum viable product" (MVP) is, and I'm throwing my hat in the ring. The term MVP is a misnomer. The words "minimum" and "viable" have competing interests. Both can't be entirely true at once, and this leads to two schools of thought: those who focus on "minimum" and those who focus on "viable". A "viable" product is a product that customers *want to buy* -- a product that they *like*. An MVP is then the minimum set of functionality that customers would be willing to purchase, at a price that meets the business/financial needs of the seller. A "minimum" product is a product that is ugly, crappy, or barely functional, but is enough to gather valuable user feedback. An MVP is then an unpolished, barely functional product that is used to gather feedback on the idea. So a "minimum viable product" contains two competing interests, which leads to people interpreting its meaning in two opposite ways. There is no "correct" answer, and the dichotomy exists because both types of products are valuable for different reasons. The startup/entrepreneurial world is deep into the lean startup methodology, which advocates for getting user feedback as soon as possible and often thereafter in order to validate the idea. The community, especially the mentors in it, have a prevailing message that says "your idea is bad until you've validated it with real customers". This is because they've seen money poured into great ideas over and over again, only to find out that no one is actually willing to pay for the new product because it isn't meeting a deep customer need. So "minimum viable product" often gets used to describe the product that gets put in front of customers first in order to elicit their feedback on the idea. On the other hand, the non-startup world tends to focus on the word "viable". Because they are thinking 3-5 years in advance, they are imagining multiple generations of the product and imagining its evolution over time. Much of that might be tentatively planned out in their head before the first product is even built. So the word "viable" means a product their customers are willing to pay for: a product that not only meets customers' needs but also that customers like and enjoy using. This is often the product that exists right before the product hits the shelves. Both of these products are necessary. It's been proven over and over again that putting an early version of your product in front of your users has the potential to save an enormous amount of time and money. At the same time, that product must be improved upon and tested internally or with a larger group of customers before being released into the world. The only difference is quite simply that they are different "products", with different purposes. The prototype is a barely functional product that gathers validated learnings and critical feedback. The beta is the product that you distribute to a subset of users right before launch to make sure everything is sparkly clean and that you have very positive customer feedback. And the "gen one" product is the first product that gets put on shelves and is available to the world. So the tl;dr is that MVP is a misnomer. "Viable" and "minimum" have competing interests that have led to the term MVP being used in different environments for two totally different phases of the product development process. Dropping the term altogether in your internal team's language may be helpful. * A "prototype" is a barely functional product that gathers validated learnings and critical feedback. Many prototypes will be built all the way up to the Gen One product. * The "beta" is the prototype product that you distribute to a subset of users right before launch to make sure everything is sparkly clean and that you have very positive customer feedback. * The "Gen One" product is the first product that gets put on shelves and is available to the world.