A prototype is not a product.<p>A prototype is an idealised example that demonstrates a concept or a set of concepts.<p>A product is a real instance of these concepts packaged up as something that a customer will use and pay for.<p>It is perfectly fine to provide prototypes as part of the development process as proof of concept. You can show them to your customers or test audience as demonstrations of what you expect your final product to look like and that you&#x27;ve correctly understood their needs.<p>A prototype is also suitable as a totem for team discussions to help develop understanding of an as-yet poorly understood problem domain.<p>Product is the embodiment of these prototypes, and all the other material such as documentation, packaging, independent certification, quality control, licensing ...<p>All Minimal Viable Product is is the embodiment of &quot;just enough&quot; of the prototype stuff to be useful to your customer, but all the other stuff is still required.<p>Prototype is Inspiration (1%), if you like, and Product is Perspiration (99%)*<p>The paradox of MVP is that you&#x27;re really just saving on that 1% but the other 99% still has to be done with very little variation in the effort required. What&#x27;s more if you&#x27;re building for a single customer MVP is just their requirements and nothing more, if you&#x27;re building for a set of customers, then MVP as opposed to P is just a case of deciding which customers you don&#x27;t care about.<p>(* Maybe it&#x27;s more like 30&#x2F;70 or 50&#x2F;50 but I was echoing the popular trope)