He picked up a rock from the floor, decorated it with two flickering lights and post-its, then sold it for over 100 USD. That’s Christian Grewell for you folks, an Adjunct Assistant Arts Professor at NYU Shanghai. Grewell, previously a tech-type Robin Hood placing free Wi-Fi spots around New York, is now teaching Minimum Viable Product at NYU Shanghai. He has also evidently mastered our proto-type culture at IMA: the idea of putting all hands on deck and creating a product we envision, and wants us to do the same. That is why The Hundred Dollar Rock was born. The Rock, a.k.a. Rocky, was first designed in the Spring Semester of 2016. The idea behind Rocky was to start off Minimum Viable Product with an illustrative example, Grewell wanted to show his students how sometimes you just have to do something. According to the professor, students should have the drive to surpass the brainstorming step of a product or service, and start prototyping. So, putting his ideology into action, Grewell tested whether people would be interested in buying a rock. As he best stated: “We have something we feel can be a prototype product or service. Is there a market for this?” Apparently, there is. If the context permits, some would pay over 100 USD for a rock. “People value uniqueness,” explains the MVP professor. And you can’t say a rock with twinkling eyes isn’t unique.Yet testing out a hypothesis is not the Rock’s only purpose. Rocky also has the uncanny characteristic of representing every step of the cycle that goes into creating and selling a product. Starting from the ideation stage, then manufacturing the product, leading on to the marketing strategy and ending in the deal’s closure; Rocky is a perfect example of the process all products endure.Ideation Stage: The idea, as was previously mentioned, aroused in Spring 2016. It was a way to provide students with an illustrative example.Manufacturing Stage: This semester, Grewell added new features to the rock, bumping the manufacturing cost from $0.5 yuan to $6 yuan. He inserted battery-powered lights that would serve as the rock’s eyes. The main purpose was to increase profits. Long-term-wise, he claims he will add more features to the rock every semester, until the production costs exceed his returns.Marketing Strategy: The rock was placed into the market through 微信(weixin), WeChat’s commercial platform. Posting Rocky in his moments, Grewell received to 20 offers, and finally sold the rock to the highest bidder: his Chinese teacher.Having heard the purpose behind Rocky and Grewell’s business model, there was one final question circling around the back of my head: “How can Rocky be an inspiration to your students?” To this, Grewell answered: “I guess I’d like to inspire people to create things quickly. And that includes putting things out there, more than anything. You need to realize whether the value of a product is something higher than its revenue, maybe it’s the satisfaction of auto-realization.” And there it is. A project cannot be measured bluntly by the revenue it will provide. We can start off small—what’s more simple than a rock? —and then grow. But most importantly, we need the drive. We want to ideate, create, and remember: have no shame. This article was written by Ori De Angelis . Please send an email to [email protected] to get in touch. Photo Credit: Christian Grewell