The power of integrated thinking through prototyping

I often wonder why very small teams, or even one-person founders, are able to build really good and even better products than big corporate's. That's crazy if you think about it. They have much less resources and money to spend, but are still able to do such a great job.

In my opinion, one reason for that is the following: When you have less resources you have to do more of your own: Build the technology, design, marketing & story-telling, testing, distribution and everything else. And I think this is actually a good thing. Because you are forced to see and think the product holistically and tightly integrated. With good products you can feel that. Everything is consistent and speaks the same language. It feels like as if one DNA or vision is incorporated in all aspects of the product.

In big corporate's this if often not the case, because a lot of people in different departments work on it. You have the product-guys, the tech-guys, marketing-guys and so on. Everybody has kind of their own vision and idea of what the product actually is. Often there is no "shared vision" or "mental model" when these people communicate. In the end, everybody works their own idea into the product. And this can lead to an inconsistent experience for the customer. These are often subtle things, but they sum up and the product just not feels quite right.

Let's look at two interesting guys who built very successful products, despite being part of big corporate's: Steve Jobs and Elon Musk. But even with them, they are both known for having their fingers in every detail of the product. From engineering to marketing and everything in between. It seems to me that they are successful because they think of the product as a whole (like a startup is forced to do).

What does all of this has to do with prototyping? Well, building a MVP forces you to think like that. You have to do it all: Build the technology, design, marketing and so on. This forces you to think through all details of the product which, in the end, will help you to build a better product.