The Digital Transformation Playbook: Rethink Your Business for the Digital Age

partial to total functionality (e.g., from a test of one key feature to a test of 
the complete offering).
Step 7: Field Test
After building a minimum viable prototype of your idea, the next step is 
to actually test it. This is where market validation takes place, as you get 
feedback on your MVP and test your assumptions.
In choosing how and where to test, you should aim for as natural an 
environment as possible—that is, as close as is feasible to the actual context 
where the ultimate solution will be used. You should also test your proto-
type with an audience as similar as possible to the customers you expect 
will be using the final version.
Confectionary maker Mondelez set up its “Fly Garage” so that real-
world customers can respond to its prototypes for new product innovations. 
“You capture the idea, you visualize it, prototype with limited resources, 
and two days after, we have the real people coming in and reacting,” says 
Maria Mujica, the company’s Latin American marketing director. “That is 
amazing because . . . we then get to look at the faces of the real people and 
ask what they like and what they’d change.”
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Before each field test, you should identify the assumptions you are 
seeking to validate, which should include the following:
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 Customer value assumptions: Do customers value your solution? Will 
they use it? What will they pay for it? Which customers are the best 
fit? What additional value are they still looking for from your solution? 
What parts did they not find necessary?
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 Business model assumptions: How will you manufacture your offering? 
How much will this cost? How will you market it, distribute it, and 
acquire new customers? How might competitors respond?
The assumptions you are testing will be guided by where you are in the 
iterative development of your innovation. In general, customer assump-
tions will be tested earlier than business model assumptions.
Step 8: Decide
At the end of each field test of an MVP, you will face a decision point. For 
start-ups, the decision is often “pivot or persevere” (Ries’s formulation), 

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with the presumption that your innovation effort will keep going until you 
run out of money. But in established enterprises, each innovation project is 
not meant to risk bankrupting the company!
For an established business, the decision after each field test is one of 
four options:
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 Proceed: Your field test has validated your ideas so far. You can move on 
to the next round of prototype development and assumptions testing. 
Go back to step 4.
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 Pivot: Your field test has raised issues. You may need to adjust your 
idea based on what you learned or go back to test another solution 
you generated before to see if it is more promising. Go back to step 4.
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 Prepare to launch: Congratulations! You’ve finished successive proto-
types, have fully validated your innovation, and are ready to bring it to 
market. Go to step 9.
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 Pull the plug: If you’ve tested all your solutions or you’ve hit the limits 
of your time or budget, now is the time to stop the process and assess 
what you’ve learned. Go straight to step 10.
Step 9: Scale Up
If you completed your iterations of steps 4–8 with an innovation deemed 
ready to launch, then the next stage is to scale it up. This is where you take 
the solution you have been testing in minimal viable form and translate it 
into a full release in the marketplace.
For customer innovations, this may include a rollout plan for manu-
facturing (where and how), distribution (which channels), and marketing 
(advance buzz, launch, and beyond). If you have developed an internal 
innovation, your rollout may focus on training, business process integra-
tion, and change management. Scaling up any innovation will also require 
you to secure more resources: staff, budget, and executive sponsorship.
Even with launch, though, the iterative learning from and improvement 
of your innovation are not over. You should plan to keep learning from 
customers’ use of your product after the launch and apply that learning to 
improve (although you may shift to a convergent experimental method to 
further optimize it).
However, not every product can iterate and evolve in the public eye to 
the same degree. The way a company iterates after launch will differ greatly 

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between a digital-only consumer start-up and a manufacturer serving busi-
ness clients with mission-critical equipment. To determine which approach 
is right for your project, see the next section, “Four Paths to Scaling Up an 
Innovation.”