There's a great book about the latter called "The Right It" by Alberto Savoia (a guy who used to work at Google to test business ideas). There he describes 8 different ways to test a biz idea:
- The Mechanical Turk – Replace complex and expensive computers or machines with human beings.
- The Pinocchio – Build a non-functional, “lifeless”, version of the product.
- The Minimum Viable Product (or Stripped Tease) – Create a functional version of it, but stripped down to its most basic functionality.
- The Provincial – Before launching world-wide, run a test on a very small sample.
- The Fake Door – Create a fake “entry” for a product that doesn’t yet exist in any form
- The Pretend-to-Own – Before investing in buying whatever you need for your it, rent or borrow it first.
- The Re-label – Put a different label on an existing product that looks like the product you want to create.
A ques to the author (I saw he commented here). What do you think are the pros and cons of interviewing people using the MOM framework vs. just putting something out there and getting feedback? Often people give very different feedback when you ask them questions vs. present something and ask for skin in the game.