From Viability to Lovability
In entrepreneurial language, certain expressions become totems. MVP – Minimum Viable Product – is one of them. Repeated in every context, elevated to a doctrine, it seems to answer everything: launch fast, test early, iterate often. But what remains of its original meaning? And more importantly, what’s left to hope for in mere viability, when so many projects have ended up in the morgue despite faithfully following the model? Is viability still a worthy end in a world yearning to reconcile the useful and the meaningful, impact and harmony?
Michelangelo, standing before a block of marble, wasn’t trying to create David. He saw him already there, imprisoned in the stone. His task wasn’t to add, but to remove – everything that wasn’t David. That anecdote, once heard during an emotional visit to Florence, resonates with another kind of wisdom: the Sufi path. The one that seeks not to accumulate, but to shed. Not to expand, but to return inward. Stripping away, layer by layer, all that is not love, all that is not truth.
A lovable product isn’t conceived as an equation. It’s sculpted, refined, approached. It demands a different gaze – the gaze of a sculptor.
Notion follows this philosophy. It feels like a summer notebook for curious minds – both free and structured, serious without being stiff. Entering Notion is like stepping into a sunlit loft, where every module is a piece of furniture you can move at will, every block a thought shaped like a dancing sentence. Menus are discreet, typography hums softly, and everything breathes a quiet kind of joy. Notion doesn’t push – it accompanies. It makes you want to create, to write, to think. And that kind of desire is contagious. Here too, lovability precedes scalability.
Another striking example is Figma. Long before it challenged the giants of collaborative design, Figma captured hearts through fluidity, aesthetic clarity, and a rare sense of community. It wasn’t a marketing promise – it was a shared experience. It was loved by a demanding niche before becoming a global standard. That’s what a Minimum Lovable Product is: something you love before you even realize you need it.
This past Friday, within the familiar walls of our conference room, thanks to Nisrine – who gracefully brought up the topic – and Saad – whose quiet brilliance filled the space with clarity – the word resurfaced: MLP, Minimum Lovable Product. Three letters, yet a compass. And in the air, like a shared inner resonance, the feeling that a forgotten truth had returned.
Seen through this lens, the role of the product owner gains a new depth. No longer just a manager of iterations or technician of trade-offs. A product owner becomes a craftsman of clarity. A guardian of meaning. Someone who knows how to strip away the features that clutter, the gimmicks that distract, the sparkles that mislead. Like the Sufi who lets go of illusions to glimpse the divine, the product owner removes what is unnecessary to reveal essential coherence. Real strength isn’t in spectacle, but in precision.
“Don’t compete on features.”
Competing on features is a race to exhaustion. Seeking lovability is a bet on loyalty.
The MVP still matters. It forces us to confront ideas with reality, to move from speculation to tangible impact. But it is only a sketch. What matters is what follows – that fragile moment when we no longer choose what’s merely functional, but what deserves to be loved.
In a world saturated with offerings, it’s not the most powerful products that win. It’s the ones that resonate. The ones that leave a soft, just, living imprint. The ones that care.
And what if innovating today meant sculpting a form of love?
Not a naïve or romantic love, but a love for detail, gesture, and connection. A way of saying, without saying: I care about you.
That may be the secret of the Minimum Lovable Product: not to seduce the world, but to be worthy of being loved – a little, gently, and lastingly.
This translation was generated with the help of AI and revised by the author.
