Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

by Jake Knapp

The ideas that went on to launch and become successful were not generated in the shout-out-loud brainstorms. The best ideas came from somewhere else. But where? Individuals were still thinking up ideas the same way they always had—while sitting at their desks, or waiting at a coffee shop, or taking a shower. Those individual-generated ideas were better.

My best work happened when I had a big challenge and not quite enough time.

Startups usually get only one good shot at a successful product before they run out of money.

The sprint is GV’s unique five-day process for answering crucial questions through prototyping and testing ideas with customers. It’s a “greatest hits” of business strategy, innovation, behavioral science, design, and more—packaged into a step-by-step process that any team can use.

Together, we created a map to identify the biggest risks. Think of this map as a story: guest meets robot, robot gives guest toothbrush, guest falls for robot.

We used voting and structured discussion to decide quickly, quietly, and without argument.

This book is a DIY guide for running your own sprint to answer your pressing business questions. On Monday, you’ll map out the problem and pick an important place to focus. On Tuesday, you’ll sketch competing solutions on paper. On Wednesday, you’ll make difficult decisions and turn your ideas into a testable hypothesis. On Thursday, you’ll hammer out a realistic prototype. And on Friday, you’ll test it with real live humans.

Five days provide enough urgency to sharpen focus and cut out useless debate, but enough breathing room to build and test a prototype without working to exhaustion.

To make the best use of that time and attention, you need a good workspace. It won’t have to be fancy, but it will need some whiteboards.

great innovation is built on existing ideas, repurposed with vision.

Explaining ideas has all kinds of downsides. If someone makes a compelling case for his or her idea or is a bit more charismatic, your opinion will be skewed. If you associate the idea with its creator (“Jamie always has great ideas”), your opinion will be skewed. Even just by knowing what the idea is about, your opinion will be skewed.

in the real world, the creators won’t be there to give sales pitches and clues. In the real world, the ideas will have to stand on their own.

Remember that most ideas sound better in the abstract,

interview five of your target customers, one at a time. He’ll let each of them try to complete a task with the prototype and ask a few questions to understand what they’re thinking as they interact with it. Meanwhile, in another room, the rest of the team will watch a video stream of the interview and make note of the customers’ reactions.

After five interviews, the patterns will be easy to spot.

85 percent of the problems were observed after just five people.

“There’s little additional benefit to running more than five people through the same study; ROI drops like a stone.”

1. A friendly welcome to start the interview 2. A series of general, open-ended context questions about the customer 3. Introduction to the prototype(s) 4. Detailed tasks to get the customer reacting to the prototype 5. A quick debrief to capture the customer’s overarching thoughts and impressions