What is a MVP in the context of Public Policy ?

What is a MVP in the context of Public Policy ?

The concept of Minimum Viable Product was developed in 2011 in Eric Ries’ book, The Lean Startup. It can be defined as a process of innovation which consists in favoring the speed of development and time to market at the expense of new functionalities or better performances. In other words, it is the very essence of a product in its most basic form. Less essential elements and technical details are not rejected, but they are reserved for further developments. MVP is useful to test new business ideas. This helps to get fast feedback from customers in order to adjust the product as soon as possible, before releasing the full product. Not only MVP is an excellent way to quickly confront the product to the realities of the market, it also permits to be more competitive, to reduce time to market, development costs, capital losses and risks of failure. In fact, MVP minimizes investments in capital : little money is used in order to have the possibility to invest comfortably in further developments.

During the MVP process, companies learn by doing : the reactions of the market help improve the products and even discover new ideas they may not have think of. As a consequence, MVP also has a positive social effect : companies can respond to the exact needs of the society. However, while the concept of MVP is growing popular among the private sector – prosperous companies such as Dropbox and Uber have started as MVPs – it has not yet reached very well the public sector.

The original role of Public Policy is to maximize the Welfare of Society. In all human activities, the Public sector is the most “user centered”, or in this case “citizen centered”. But social change is far more complicated than building a business. It requires more listening, more care, more stakeholders…etc. Public policies have to propose solutions that are embraced by beneficiaries, address root causes, and include an engine that can accelerate growth to reach the scale of the needs. As they are so hard to implement, public policies often fail to address societal issues and produce discontent among citizens. Fewer citizens than ever believe government is meeting their needs. This situation is very dangerous for democracy because if citizens don’t believe anymore into the government’s capacity to improve their well-being, administrations will lose their legitimacy to act.

What is the potential of MVP in producing more efficient public policies?

I. It is extremely hard for policy makers to define the perfect solution

Drawing the parallel with the private sector, citizens could be considered as clients. Instead of responding to the private demand to achieve more profit, public policies would respond to the public demand to achieve more welfare. While the objective is different, the process is the same. Consequently, MVP might be a solution to the main problems politicians face when they want to implement new public policies.

First, the administration never has access to the whole scope of social problems because there is a lack of bottom up approach. While in the private sector the price is the perfect indicator to assess the state of the demand, there is not such indicator for public demand. Most of the information politicians get comes from the media and from the most politicized and informed citizens. Most of the public demand never reaches the administration and many individuals feel neglected. As a consequence, there is a great chance that civil servants don’t understand the problem that is to be solved. If policy proposals don’t correspond to citizens’ demand or not to their essential demand, civil servants may develop perfect but un useful solutions because they are built for the wrong problem.

Another difficulty is the disconnection between politicians and a large part of the society. Even if the problem is well defined, the chosen solution might be the wrong one because it’s only meaningful for civil servants. An initiative connected to the experience of civil servants’ daily lives isn’t necessarily connected to the rest of the society daily lives.

Moreover, while deep and useful public policies require time, politicians are generally asked to act quickly. The public and private sector don’t have the same time frame. A crisis such as the Coronavirus requires fast and symbolic actions. The time dedicated to experimentation and reflection, which is essential to perfectly adapt to the needs of society, is neglected. This situation is lied to the fact politicians are asked to show LEADERSHIP. Rapid answers help avoid political disorder, respond to media pressure and to electoral mandate, but they are unproductive. They usually take the shape of symbolic policies such as acknowledgments and promises of political action instead of fixing the real issue. They even don’t necessarily address the real problem but the one pointed out by the media.

II. MVP is a great tool to design public policies which respond to the public demand

Lasting solutions need to accommodate the complexity of political issues. However, complex issues don’t need complex solutions, but a different approach. MVP is a good tool to address the problems listed above. According to Minlab’s reaseacher Jakob Schjørring, by using MVP, politicians could replace “symbolic policy with viable substance policy”.

MVP is a solution to better define the whole scope of a problem. It gives politicians the chance to take more time to assess an issue and avoid

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