Lean Innovation – A Recap
Whew! Who knew how deep our study on lean innovation was going to get? 14 installments later I hope you have a good overview of Lean Innovation and how you can use it the next time you or someone you work with is trying to introduce an innovation or new product in the marketplace.
Blank and Dorf’s book and all the additional resources on the web are the best template I have ever found for introducing a new product or innovation. But, the book is not easy reading. Even my summary of the main topics went into 14 installments! Therefore, I want to recap the major concepts in one complete blog and point you back to the individual blogs when you might want to go deeper.
Here is the key point of the text – Startups (including any new innovation) are not just smaller companies. They are a group of entrepreneurs in search of a repeatable and profitable business model. Traditional, large company tools and methodologies are deadly for the startup.
There are four steps to the customer development process. There are plenty of books written on how to handle the last two steps. Blank and Dorf focus on the first two steps. After you have successfully completed the Customer Discover and Customer Validation steps, you have found your repeatable business model and you are ready to scale.
We wrote 14 blogs to cover this process. Below are brief descriptions and links to each blog. I hope this summary allows you to grasp the entirety of the series and grab what you need, when you need it.
- How Lean Innovation Changes Everything – A brief introduction to the Customer Development process.
- The 9 Deadly Sins of Innovation – Overview of the traps of “large company” thinking when applied to a startup and how to avoid these traps.
- The Secret Sauce of Innovation – Introduction of the 4 steps of the Customer Development model.
- Get Out of the Building to Succeed – Overview of the Customer Discovery process and a look at the failure of Iridium – the satellite mobile phone service.
- Ditch Your Business Plan – How the Business Model Canvas is replacing the traditional business plan.
- Do People Really Care? – How to avoid being the “New Coke” of your generation by gathering customer feedback early and often.
- Is it Good Enough? – How to find out if your solution is good enough to move forward with development.
- Is it Time to Pivot? – How to answer the Pivot or Proceed question in the Customer Discovery phase.
- Is Your Business Ready to Ramp (Physical Channel) – As we enter the Customer Validation phase, we split our discussion between the physical and digital channels. These are the “get ready to sell” steps for the physical channel.
- Is Your Business Ready to Ramp (Digital Channel) – These are the “get ready to sell” steps for the digital channel.
- Sell, Sell, Sell! (Physical Channel) – Getting out of the building for the 3rd time to test your sales process in the physical channel.
- Sell, Sell, Sell! (Digital Channel) – Getting out of the building for the 3rd time to test your sales process in the digital channel.
- The Power of Positioning – How to analyze and develop your product and company positioning.
- Do You Feel Lucky? – The final go or no go decision on your innovation. Is it ready to launch into the Customer Creation phase?
That is it. A 14 blog overview of the Lean Innovation process. I hope that my review of this fantastic process will make this tool more accessible to you and more likely for you to use. It is really a great tool!
As always, I’ve done my best to summarize the main principles in this blog but pick up a copy of “The Startup Owner’s Manual” by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf to dive deeper.
Thank you for being a part of our values driven community!
Image courtesy of http://www.franciscopalao.com/english/validate-your-business-model-following-the-customer-development-process/
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