How to Turn Product Design Big Ideas Into MVPs
Picking The Right Direction
Brainstorms can be fun and highly productive if planned properly. At Beyond Design, we have developed a Strategic Design Process (SDP) Workshop, intended to spark creativity, generate bold ideas, and develop strategies that meet the overall business objectives. Once brainstorming ends, the real challenge begins: determining which ideas have the best potential to become Minimum Viable Products (MVPs).
MVPs are the leanest, most strategic versions of ideas that deliver meaningful value quickly while paving the way for long-term growth. Achieving this requires moving from excitement to evaluation. To guide this process, we use a weighted ranking system, a structured approach balancing vision with business practicality to organize the concepts based on which ideas are worth developing first.
From Idea to MVP
One past concept example involved turning a product’s packaging into a custom plant holder with built-in seeds.
On paper, it’s an attractive idea. But is it the right starting point? How long will it take for the project to reach the market? What is the ROI, and how long will it take? What are the risks? By running it through our evaluation matrix, we can objectively test its strengths and weaknesses against eight critical criteria.
The Evaluation Criteria
- Customer Value & Usability (20%)
At the heart of any product is its ability to improve lives. If customers don’t find it valuable and easy to use, adoption will stall. This is why customer impact carries the greatest weight. - Market Attractiveness (20%)
Even the best product will struggle without a strong market. Here, we examine market size, growth trends, and competitive landscape to gauge whether the opportunity is worth pursuing. - Strategic Fit (15%)
Great ideas must align with a company’s long-term goals and capabilities. This ensures that development resources and brand positioning are moving in the same direction. - Technical Feasibility (15%)
Ambition is important, but practicality is essential. This score estimates whether the concept can be built using current technology and within realistic timelines. - Financial Viability (15%)
Beyond technical possibility, the economics must make sense. Can the product be developed, produced, and sold profitably? Financial soundness keeps ideas grounded. - Risk Assessment (5%)
Every innovation carries risks, such as regulatory hurdles and supply chain challenges that need to be prepared for. - Sustainability & Impact (5%)
Today’s customers and stakeholders value products that reduce environmental impact and contribute positively to society. This criterion ensures responsibility is part of the strategy. - Differentiation & Defensibility (5%)
A product must stand out from the crowd. Differentiation asks what makes the concept unique, while defensibility measures how well that advantage can be protected from competitors.
For our brand-oriented packaging idea example, the idea was promising, but the benchmarks revealed that the seed concept didn’t score highly on most of the weighted criteria. This information saved the Client valuable time and allowed them to pursue product roadmaps for MVPs with more market potential and a better strategic fit.
Using such a classification sets a level game field for all the ideas, regardless of their origin. Sort of an equity baseline. Most ideas are not applicable or even sometimes relate to the problem at hand, but they all have the same chance of priming an actual value proposition if people are given the same opportunity and respect.
Why Criteria Matter
Innovation naturally sparks passion and gut instinct. Those instincts are valuable and often point toward bold, original ideas. But relying on intuition alone can be risky. Defined criteria provide a data-supported framework for decision-making, so choose the measures that fit your business and adjust their weights accordingly. Aligning ideas with criteria that match your business objectives and company values is a proven way to build out valuable product roadmaps, complete with MVPs.
The balance of gut feeling plus structured evaluation ensures that the best ideas rise to the top and are selected as viable concepts to move forward with the best shot of success. The criteria and ranking can be adjusted for individual industries to match their customers’ profiles or strategic vision. The important thing is to have a criterion that is understood and makes sense in real life.
Build On Progress
Turning big ideas into MVPs is about focus. The weighted ranking system transforms post-workshop energy into a clear action plan. By zeroing in on the MVP, organizations avoid overbuilding and instead carefully test and select which opportunities are right for further development. This is how big ideas become smart investments, enable fast launches, and create foundational product platforms for long-term growth.
Having recorded history helps make decisions based on the related criteria value in situations where unforeseen real-life constraints call for changes.
From Evaluation To Execution
You will build your MVP once the idea has been evaluated using criteria and you have a clear winner. This involves defining the core functionality to deliver the most value while minimizing complexities. Create a feature hierarchy of must-haves and nice-to-haves, and then prioritize the ones that are critical for the product to function and provide value. This ensures a data-based negotiation process with stakeholders not involved in the original ideation process. The argumentation will not be based on biased opinions from the participants. To confirm that even further, everything else can be added in future iterations based on user feedback and testing.
Next, establish clear success metrics that align with your evaluation criteria. If customer value is a top priority in your ranking, then user engagement and satisfaction scores should be primary KPIs. If market attractiveness drove your decision, focus on adoption rates and market penetration metrics.
Finally, plan for rapid iteration cycles. The beauty of an MVP is its ability to test assumptions quickly and pivot based on real-world feedback. Build in regular checkpoints to have real people inspect your idea, test it, and adjust it based on what you learn. This will involve as many iteration cycles as you can fit in your timeline and budget until you are happy with the result.
The path from brainstorm to breakthrough requires a mix of creative vision and analytical rigor to form a systematic evaluation process. This is how designers help organizations build pipelines of MVPs with the highest probability of success. By combining structured evaluation with focused execution, bold ideas transform into market-ready products that drive sustainable growth.
Building a Culture of Continuous Innovation
It is also important to consider that creativity and formal brainstorming events should be a frequent and recurrent activity and not a fringe activity. It takes a long time for people to be comfortable exposing their “crazy” side in group settings. This is not different from any team sports chemistry buildup. The endorphins released in creative activity are not different from those released by winning the championship.
Want to create Big Ideas and turn them into MVPs? Please contact us at info@startbeyond.com to discuss your next big idea!
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