Really interesting piece. It is amazing that a technique used to optimize shop floors has been applied to the engineering field which I believe to be so creative versus "industrial."
I have led product in a number of software companies -- some with an Alpha Engineer and some without. The companies with a dominate engineer have outperformed the others when the lead engineer could relate to the other teams and customers. This is a fine reminder, but you should note that no matter how great the star is, he is still part of a team.
You are able to capture something that I have thought about for years. It really plays into not just adoption, but retention of users. The MVP might get you some adopters. The MLP gets you users for life.