Testing Business Ideas: book summary and how to use it

Testing Business Ideas (Wiley, 2019) by David J. Bland and Alexander Osterwalder is a field guide to reducing the risk of a new idea through quick experiments before you invest heavily. It belongs to the Strategyzer series that includes Business Model Generation (see Strategyzer).

The core idea

Every business idea rests on assumptions. Turn them into testable hypotheses, run cheap experiments, and judge the evidence you collect. The book groups the risk into three types:

• Desirability: do customers want it?
• Feasibility: can we build and deliver it?
• Viability: can it make money?

Key concepts

• Test the riskiest assumption first, the one that would kill the idea if it's wrong.
• Evidence strength: what people do (pre-orders, sign-ups, payments) is stronger than what they say (interviews, surveys).
• Discovery vs validation experiments: start cheap and exploratory, then move to experiments that ask for real commitment.

A solo founder's testing plan (using the book's logic)

1. Write your top three assumptions as "We believe that…".
2. Interview 10 target customers about the problem, not your solution.
3. Put up a simple landing page and measure sign-ups.
4. Ask for a pre-order or deposit, the strongest signal.
5. Decide: persevere, pivot or stop.

Step-by-step guide: how to validate a business idea. More books: best books for solopreneurs.

This is an independent summary to help you decide whether to read the book. We don't reproduce or distribute the book; buy it or borrow it from a library.