LEANSTACK Blog - Lean Startup and Lean Business Model Canvas Blog

Love the Problem, Not Your Solution

I recently got asked about the most common pitfall that trips up entrepreneurs. Top on my list is: Falling in love with your solution. I’ve previously labeled this pre-disposition for the solution as the “Innovator’s Bias”.

In science, one of the ways we attempt to overcome this kind of bias is through reasoning from first principles. The same can also be applied in business.

With first principles you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.
– Elon Musk

As you’ll see in this post, the “Innovator Bias” is a sneaky troll — rearing it’s ugly head, not just during ideation, but throughout the innovation lifecycle, often when you least expect it. At each step, some of the most fundamental truths come from a deep understanding of problems before solutions.

Innovation Management

Ash Maurya - Aug 04

I spend a lot of time at the intersection of “business modeling” and “lean startup” and have been looking for the right label to describe this type of work. It’s not enough to simply call it one or the other.

Business modeling helps deconstruct big ideas into their component pieces, while lean startup techniques help test those component pieces through experiments. But there is a third part to the process — a systematic framework for prioritizing which components you test first.

After much deliberation, I’ve settled on the label: “Innovation Management”.

Yes, I am aware that “innovation” is an already overloaded term and more corporate sounding than startup sounding. The other alternative I considered, “Entrepreneurial Management”, is a mouthful and I’m willing to temporarily risk losing you — provided I win you back by the end of this post.

The Art of the Scientist

Ash Maurya - Jun 08

After the introduction of the scientific method, there was a marked increase in the pace of breakthrough discoveries. Both science and entrepreneurship operate under conditions of extreme uncertainty, so the thinking goes that the adoption of some entrepreneurial method might do for business innovation what the scientific method did for scientific discoveries: dramatically accelerate the pace. This is the core message of the Lean Startup methodology.

The closest equivalent to a scientific experiment in innovation is a cycle around the Build-Measure-Learn validated learning loop.

However, simply running more experiments is not enough. More cycles around the build-measure-learn loop do not automatically lead to new insights. Many experiments simply invalidate a bad idea and leave you stuck.

So how then do you set yourself up for breakthrough? The answer lies in a deeper understanding of how true science is done.

How to Get Stakeholder Buy-in for Your Big Idea

Ash Maurya - Jun 01

Startups are conversations. The true job of an entrepreneur is to systematically de-risk their big idea (or business model) through a series of conversations. My first book, Running Lean focused on the entrepreneur:customer conversation. My next book, Scaling Lean, focuses on the entrepreneur:stakeholder conversation.

It’s Time to Fire the Business Plan for Good

Ash Maurya - Mar 25

Have you ever written a Business Plan? Did you enjoy the process?

I have posed these two questions to thousands of makers, entrepreneurs, and innovators around the world and here’s what I found:

Only 30% of them had ever written a business plan and less than 2% enjoyed the process.

I posed a different question to the investors (and stakeholders) in the room: “Do you read the entire business plan?” Again, less than 2% admitted to doing so — citing a preference for the 1-page executive summary, 10-page slide-deck, or 30-second elevator pitch.

Why then are we still forcing people to spend weeks writing a 40 page document that no one reads?