THE LEAN APPROACH
Professor Ethan Mollick
@emollick
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Startups change all the time
Kaplan-Meier survival estimates
1.00
0.75
0.50
0.25
0.00
0 5 10 15 20
analysis time
changex = 0 changex = 1
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How products are created (in theory)
Concept Product Alpha/Beta Launch/
Dev. Test 1st Ship
Waterfall
Requirements
Design
Implementation
Verification
Maintenance
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Steve Blank’s Insight
Product Introduction Model
Concept Product Alpha/Beta Launch/
Dev. Test 1st Ship
Customer Development
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
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Customer Discovery
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
• Not about selling, about listening
• Test your hypotheses
• Continuous Discovery and Feedback
• Done by founders…outside the building
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Customer Validation
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
Do-over
• Have you achieved “product-market fit”?
• Demonstrated demand from adopters in your beach
head market
• Customers passionate about your solution
• Return to Discovery absent passionate key adopters
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The Pivot
• Pivot
• Based on feedback heard by founders
• Fast, agile and opportunistic
• (Almost) celebrate failure…whenever it’s instructive
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Customer Creation
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
• Creation comes after proof of sales
• Spend to scale based on facts, not guesses
• Begins only with repeatable, scalable processes
for sales, marketing, demand creation
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Company Building
Customer Customer Customer Company
Discovery Validation Creation Building
• • Re look at your
Traditional mission
lean approach puts company at the
end, but….
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Eric Ries’s Insight
Waterfall Agile
Requirements
Design
Implementation
Verification
Maintenance
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“Lean Startups”
Customer Customer Customer Company
Agile
Discovery Validation Creation Building
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Positives and negatives
• Any flexible approach is good, you don’t need to be lean
• If you are creating a new drug or a new car, lean may not be right
• Lean can be hard!
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Implementing this approach
Generate
Business Create Prioritize Minimal
Minimal Viable
Concept hypotheses Viable Products
Products
Run Tests
Achieve Product-
Pivot Market Fit
Flowchart based on material develop by Eric Reis and Tom Eisenman
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