It is one of the three parts that make up a lean startup (business model design, customer development, agile engineering).
Customer development starts with the key idea that there are no facts inside your building so get outside to test them.
[3] Customer development is the opposite of the “if we build it, they will come”[9] product development-centered strategy, which is full of risks and can ultimately be the downfall of a company.
While writing about his experiences as an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley for his memoir, Blank began to notice patterns in the startups he was involved with.
[10] Recognizing that startups are not simply smaller versions of large companies, he observed that entrepreneurs need to have a systemized approach to guide their search for “repeatable and scalable business models.”[10] The revelation led to his first book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win, which served as the course text for his first class and heralded the birth of Customer Development, which in turn spawned the Lean Startup movement.
[14][15] From the customer development view, a business model is a representation of how organizations create, deliver and capture value.
[17] The business model is tested in the real world (e.g., through a Minimum Viable Product) to gather customer input and make necessary changes.
[16] It is designed to change rapidly, highlight alternatives, promote a customer focus and encourage testing.
[2][20] When a hypothesis is found to be incorrect, entrepreneurs can apply Customer Development strategies to turn the mistake into a Pivot.
[5][21] The MVP allows entrepreneurs to gather feedback from early adopters to prevent pitfalls and avoid building unwanted products.
Creating an MVP is one way to quickly test mockups and ideas in the real world, especially with Web and mobile startups.