Jun 9, 2026 · 34 min · 10 segments
Why do so many promising pilots fail to scale? In this episode of Leader Generation, Tessa Burg talks with digital transformation leader Kenneth Phua to explore what separates successful pilots from…
Kenneth PhuaGuest
Tessa BurgHost
Tessa, I think you hit the nail on the head with that, right? I think one of the biggest things that most people don't realize is that a lot of MVPs have a lot of manual portions behind it.

And one of the, I would say, the litmus test on what can be manual or not is whether it affects the experience.

And it can be a B2C, it can be B2B, but whether or not it affects experience experience and whether or not that particular experience that is manual how transparent is it to the end
user

and i think that's almost critical one of the things that i tried to build at one point or that i was building at one point was an internal tool this tool was meant to extrapolate the value that digital can bring to the activities that you were executing in digital.

I like to call the MVP at the time semi-optimistic, right? Because a lot of it was still very manual.

I mean, it's supposed to be very complex AI engine that we had to put behind it at the time, what we started to do was, I would say, a very sophisticated Excel before we built the AI engine, just to be able to test, look, would people use this? Is it helpful? Is it accurate? It didn't compromise the experience.

I think a lot of times we need to realize that manuals sometimes really help in launching the MVP, making sure that you're validating the proposition.

It's a smart way of saying, hey, look, the reality is I'm not going to spend millions of dollars to build an architecture that is unvalidated at this stage.

And let's go with what we have, right? As long as it doesn't affect the experience.

Tessa, I think you hit the nail on the head with that, right? I think one of the biggest things that most people don't realize is that a lot of MVPs have a lot of manual portions behind it.

And one of the, I would say, the litmus test on what can be manual or not is whether it affects the experience.

And it can be a B2C, it can be B2B, but whether or not it affects experience experience and whether or not that particular experience that is manual how transparent is it to the end
user

and i think that's almost critical one of the things that i tried to build at one point or that i was building at one point was an internal tool this tool was meant to extrapolate the value that digital can bring to the activities that you were executing in digital.

I like to call the MVP at the time semi-optimistic, right? Because a lot of it was still very manual.

I mean, it's supposed to be very complex AI engine that we had to put behind it at the time, what we started to do was, I would say, a very sophisticated Excel before we built the AI engine, just to be able to test, look, would people use this? Is it helpful? Is it accurate? It didn't compromise the experience.

I think a lot of times we need to realize that manuals sometimes really help in launching the MVP, making sure that you're validating the proposition.

It's a smart way of saying, hey, look, the reality is I'm not going to spend millions of dollars to build an architecture that is unvalidated at this stage.

And let's go with what we have, right? As long as it doesn't affect the experience.
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