Introduction to Lean

Introduction to ModuleThe Changing World of Work

The Lean Startup Approach to Innovation

Dr Tendayi Viki

Follow Me: @tendayiviki

The world of work is changing.• Software is eating the world. • The world is hyper-connected. • The power of the crowd.

The pace of change is staggering. It took radio broadcasters 38 years to reach an audience of 50

million, television 13 years, and the Internet just four.• There were 50 pages on the World Wide Web in 1993; today there are

more than 50 million pages. Vital Statistics - (http://buff.ly/1eZ3lZ4)

In 2004, the last episode of Friends aired. 52 million people watched it and not one person sent out a tweet about it. • Mark Zuckerberg was still a Harvard student. • Obama was still a senator in Illinois.• And…. The IPhone did not exist!

Fast Company - (http://www.fastcompany.com/)

Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovitz (2013)The Lean Entrepreneur

Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovitz (2013)The Lean Entrepreneur

The Narrative

Everyone wants to be….

The Reality

Stephen J. Kline & Nathan Rosenberg (1986)An Overview of Innovation

“Models that depict innovation as a smooth, well-behaved linear process badly misspecify the nature and direction of the

casual factors at work…..

Innovation is complex, uncertain, somewhat disorderly, and subject to changes of many sorts…”

The Challenge

Most new businesses and innovations fail:

• In some cases failure rates are over 70%.

• Most new product launches fail.

• Being part of a large company does not guarantee success.

• Having a lot of investment money from venture capital does not guarantee success.

Previous success does not guarantee future success (Frankish et al., 2012).• Entrepreneurs don’t really learn, they just claim they do!

http://ow.ly/eR6Uh

What we learn in business school…

Business planning is problematic:• Because it describes as linear, a process that is

actually non-linear.

Business planning is problematic:• Because it places too much emphasis on the

value of the initial idea. • It also gears up the organization for execution

and operational effectiveness.

Do not place too much emphasis on the value of your initial

business idea! Or any other ‘clever’ ideas you have floating in

your head right now.

People are terrible at predicting what other people will pay money for!

You probably think your business idea is this cute…

But this is what it looks like to your customers!

Rob Fitzpatrick and Salim Virani (2012)

http://www.foundercentric.com/

Great entrepreneurs are comfortable with “killing their babies”…• And pivoting to new ideas….

The Art of Imitation

New companies fail when people try to act like a large

company too early.

Startups are NOT smaller versions of big companies!

(Steve Blank & Bob Dorf, 2012)

Rob Fitzpatrick and Salim Virani (2012)http://www.foundercentric.com/

No two startup situations are the same…

• (Even in the same market as another company)

Rob Fitzpatrick and Salim Virani (2012)http://www.foundercentric.com/

Each startup situation has its own topography….• And it’s your job to systematically figure out

the topology of your own startup.

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mysza/4084440851/

A Startup is A Thesis

A Path for Searching: For a sustainable and profitable

business model…

A Startup is Really Like a Research Project: We should not be making business plans,

we should make research proposals.

The Startup is a Research Team: All hands on deck, to learn what

customers want…

And a sustainable/profitable way to deliver that value to them….

A Significant Contribution: The significant contribution of a startup is

building something people want…

Upon achieving product-market fit, a startup graduates…

The Process

Eric Ries (2011) The Lean Startup

http://lean.st

Prototype. Do Less (e.g. MVP). Talk to Customers. Learn then Confirm. Iterate or Pivot.

Rob Fitzpatrick and Salim Virani (2012)

http://www.foundercentric.com/

Ash Maurya (2012)Running Lean

http://www.runningleanhq.com/

Ash Maurya (2012)Running Lean

http://www.spark59.com/

Document your Plan A Who are the customers? What problems do they have? What solution are you proposing?

Ash Maurya (2012)

Running Lean

http://www.runningleanhq.com/

Alexander Osterwalder (2012)http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/

Identify your riskiest assumptions. Develop falsifiable hypotheses.

Say what exact behaviour you are assuming your customer will show.

Run studies to test your assumptions.

Eric Ries (2011) The Lean Startup

http://lean.st

Thank You&

See You Next Week