Pretend to Own

This type of experiment focuses on borrowing or renting the necessary resources to test a product, rather than investing heavily in them upfront. This strategy can be crucial for validating market demand and feasibility without incurring significant costs.

This approach enables teams to test their hypotheses about market demand and product utility with minimal resources. The primary objective is to gather valuable data and insights on customer acceptance and the product’s viability in the real world.

The process begins with identifying the key resources necessary for product testing. These resources could range from manufacturing equipment, software tools, to specialized facilities. Instead of purchasing these resources, teams look for ways to borrow, lease, or use them temporarily. This could involve working with pilot plants, using shared spaces like maker labs for hardware development, or leveraging cloud computing platforms for software testing. By doing so, teams can simulate having full ownership of the resources without the associated costs.

This approach reduces financial risk and increases flexibility. Startups and product teams often operate under tight budget constraints. If the product concept proves unviable, the team can pivot or abandon the project with minimal losses. On the other hand, positive validation results provide a stronger case for securing further investment or resources for full-scale production.

In practice, product teams use this approach to test various aspects of their product. For instance, a food product startup might use a pilot plant to test small-scale production and gather feedback on taste, packaging, and shelf-life. A tech startup might use cloud services to test their software under real-world conditions without investing in expensive server infrastructure. By doing so, they gather essential data on user engagement, bugs, and usability issues.