THE LEAP METHOD: P IS FOR PROTOTYPE
Stop Waiting for the Audi. Build the Tricycle.
I know the feeling well: the leader who has been planning, researching, and refining for so long that nothing has actually been built or tested. The writer who keeps returning to the rough draft, revising sentences no one will ever see, instead of publishing a simple post and finding out what people think. Or the founder waiting until the website is perfect before letting a single person visit it. I have certainly been there, lapsing into making perfection the enemy of good.
The Prototype phase is the antidote to this paralysis. It’s permission to build something scrappy, imperfect, and real.
This is the fourth phase of LEAP, and in some ways it’s the whole point of the first three phases. You leveraged what you already had. You envisioned what you actually wanted. You asked sharper questions and gained clarity. Now it’s time to build it — not the finished version, just a version.
The Audi vs. the Tricycle
Here’s the metaphor that changes how most people approach this phase.
Most of us only allow ourselves to imagine the Audi version of our idea: the fully realized, polished, perfectly funded future state. The version with the logo already designed, the team already hired, the launch already flawless. The Audi version is so far away from where you’re currently standing that starting feels impossible. So, predictably, you don’t start.
The Tricycle Prototype is the smallest, most viable version of that same idea. It’s the version you could actually build this week, or this month, with exactly what you have right now. No funding round is required. No team is required. Just you, a version of the idea small enough to exist, and the willingness to put it out into the world.
The Tricycle is not a lesser version of your dream, .it is the first real test of whether the dream is worth pursuing. And after the Tricycle comes something a little more capable — call it the scooter version. Still not the Moonshot Prototype, the Audi, but that’s just fine.
Embracing Experimentation
Prototyping is a mindset shift before it’s a methodology, and the shift is this: experimentation takes the pressure off needing to hit a home run on your first swing, or your second swing.
We only learn through iteration, and iteration requires something to iterate upon — an actual object, draft, or offer that exists outside your head, imperfect as it may be. The scrappy, duct-tape version of your idea is not embarrassing. The doodled prototype is evidence of courage and momentum, which brings us back to something we established in the Leverage phase: your Inventory of Courage. Every prototype that failed, every rough draft that missed the mark, is an entry in that same inventory, building toward something better, the same way every hard thing you’ve survived built toward the leap you’re making now.
It’s worth remembering that some of the most successful products, companies, and careers started as something barely recognizable compared to what they became. The gap between the tricycle and the Audi is not a flaw in the process, t is the process.
Prototyping as a Feedback Loop
A prototype is an invitation for feedback.
Building something real, even imperfectly, allows other people to respond to it. Their responses contain intelligence you cannot generate alone, no matter how much time you spend thinking in isolation. This is where the Ask phase and the Prototype phase connect directly: you asked better questions, sharpened your thinking, and got clear on a direction. Now the prototype helps you to explore and test feedback you gather.
The feedback loop between a prototype and the response it generates is where ideas get genuinely better. In the testing stage, reality gets a vote.
Often the feedback reveals needs and desires you didn’t know existed. The gap between what you imagined people wanted and what they actually respond to is the space where innovation lives.
Try this: Identify the Tricycle version of your current leap. What is the smallest, most buildable version you could test within the next thirty days? What would you need to make it real, and who would you show it to first?
The Full Circle
Bring the whole arc together for a moment: Leverage, Envision, Ask, Prototype. Keep in mind that this was never meant to be a linear checklist you complete once and file away. It’s a living, iterative practice.
Leaders who make great leaps don’t do it once. They leverage, envision, ask, and prototype continuously, and each cycle makes the next one more informed, more courageous, and more impactful. The Tricycle you build today becomes an entry in tomorrow’s Inventory of Courage.
The leap is never a single moment; it is the compilation of a practice full of wonder and rigor. Now you have the framework. The only thing left is to begin.
“The Tricycle is not a lesser version of your dream. It is the first real test of whether the dream is worth pursuing.”
About Natalie
Dr. Natalie Nixon is the creativity whisperer to the C-suite, helping leaders make better business decisions through wonder and rigor. At Figure 8 Thinking, she’s a creativity strategist, global keynote speaker and author of the award winning The Creativity Leap and the upcoming book Move. Think. Rest.: Redefining Productivity & Our Relationship with Time.
Real Leaders named Natalie one of the Top 50 keynote speakers of 2022 and she’s been featured in Forbes and Fast Company. She received her BA from Vassar College, and her PhD from the University of Westminster. These days you can find her on the ballroom floor fine-tuning her cha-cha and foxtrot.
Follow Natalie on Instagram: @natwnixon.