I discovered Pretotyping in 2011 while teaching Lean Startup and Innovation at the Master in Complex Actions of the renowned international science postgraduate school “International School of Advanced Studies” in Trieste.
I was teaching techniques for early validation of innovation ideas, but I was not happy with the suggestions coming from the “official” lean startup movement. I found these too generic, so I started looking for alternatives and I found about Alberto Savoia and his “Pretotype it” booklet. That was exactly what I had been looking for.
Pretotyping is a framework and set of practices and tools on how to address innovation in organisations by multiplying the number of innovations tested while at the same time dramatically reducing the cost of innovation (i.e. new product failures).
The following year I spent a month in Silicon Valley, networking with the startup and innovation community to exchange educational techniques for entrepreneurship, and of course I met the man, Alberto. In that occasion I decided to translate the MVP booklet to Italian and I did it in 6 evenings while still in SV: an MVP shouldn’t take long to execute! This gained me a prominent role as early Pretotyping evangelist and I have collaborated with Alberto ever since.
You are not only one of the first, but one of the best “disciple”, practitioner, and teacher of pretotyping. – Alberto Savoia
The Italian translation went on Kindle and later on was published as a physical book on Amazon. I must admit it is still selling well, in spite of the relatively small dimension of the Italian market!
Fast forward a couple of years and I moved to London, where I started Pretotype Company Ltd, the first pretotyping company in Europe, soon followed by the Danish Pree.to by the other European pretotyping guru Tim Vang (congrats Tim for the amazing traction of Pree.to!)
With the Pretotype Company Alberto and I helped some of the most prestigious corporates in Europe to bring an innovation mindset within the organisation, based on Pretotyping, obvs! Among our clients are the giant UK retailer Tesco, the BBC, booking.com, Fremantle Media and many others across Europe. We also collaborated with Google’s CSI:Lab (Creative Skills for Innovation), to develop a programme on innovation for their G2G programme (more on this in a separate post).
Today I deliver keynote speeches on Pretotyping and advise organisations on how to make the best use of Pretotyping, for real, long-term change, to embrace innovation across the company while keeping the cost of innovation (i.e. new product failures) the lowest possible.
If you want to make your organisation really innovative, get in touch for a chat on how Pretotyping can be your winning bet! Reach me on pretotype@zangrando.com
