The MVE ( minimum viable ecosystem) is focused on achieving commercial scale early—a broad deployment of a (relatively) shallow offer. With this as an established foundation, the conversation with potential partners shifts from “after we jointly get this system together, we’ll go find customers and then we’ll all succeed” to “I have an established customer pool that would appreciate the value proposition even more if you were a part of it.”
By establishing a base of consumers, the MVE reduces (but does not eliminate) demand uncertainty for partners and lowers the hurdles to bringing them on board. In the language of the leadership prism we discussed in chapter 5, building out in stages from the MVE kernel makes it easier to convince partners of their expected surplus.
And the organization that drives the MVE establishes itself as the de facto ecosystem leader—both because it has clear ownership of the customer base and because it is in control of the order in which additional partners will be invited to come on board.
A great example of this is the M-PESA success story in Kenya.
M-PESA’s 2007 money-transfer-only offer had all the characteristics of a perfect minimum viable footprint. It was simple, and therefore relatively straightforward to deploy; it was valued, and therefore able to attract demand among an initial group of target consumers; and it was extendable, and therefore able to accommodate the addition of new elements. Having established itself in the market, M-PESA was able to use this MVE as a platform on which to sequentially mount additional elements for the expansion of the proposition.
Notes from The Wide Lens by Ron Adner