My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Errol Arkilic, former program director for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps), now founder of M34 Capital Steve Weinstein, CEO of MovieLabs Venk Shukla, president TiE Silicon Valley and general partner, Monta Vista Capital In my interview … Continue reading »
Customer Development
Fear of Failure and Lack of Speed In a Large Corporation
I just spent a day working with Bob, the Chief Innovation Officer of a very smart large company I’ll call Acme Widgets. Bob summarized Acme’s impediments to innovation. “At our company we have a culture that fears failure. A failed project is considered a negative to a corporate career. As a result, few people want … Continue reading »
Impact! NYU Scales the Lean LaunchPad
NYU has adopted the Lean LaunchPad® class as a standard entrepreneurship course across twelve different schools/colleges within the University. Over 1,000 students a year are learning lean startup concepts. Impact! —– In August 2011 I received an email from someone at NYU I never heard of. Frank Rimalovski, the Executive Director of the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute, had just read about … Continue reading »
Why Corporate Skunk Works Need to Die
In the 20th century, corporate skunk works® were used to develop disruptive innovation separate from the rest of the company. They were the hallmark of innovative corporations. By the middle of the 21st century the only companies with skunk works will be the ones that have failed to master continuous innovation. Skunk works will be the signposts of … Continue reading »
Born Global or Die Local – Building a Regional Startup Playbook
Entrepreneurship is everywhere, but everywhere isn’t a level playing field. What’s the playbook for your region or country to make it so? ———- Scalable startups are on a trajectory for a billion dollar market cap. They grow into companies that define an industry and create jobs. Not all start ups want to go in that … Continue reading »
The Business Model Canvas Gets Even Better – Value Proposition Design
Product/Market fit now has its own book. Alexander Osterwalder wrote it. Buy it. — The Lean Startup process builds new ventures more efficiently. It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses and agile engineering to build minimum viable products. This week … Continue reading »
Watching My Students Grow
“You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.” Galileo Galilei One of the great things about teaching is that while some students pass by like mist in the night others remain connected forever. I get to watch them grow into their careers and cheer them on. — Its … Continue reading »
The Woodstock of K-12 education
Describing something as the “Woodstock of…” has taken to mean a one-of-a-kind historic gathering. It happened recently when a group of educators came to the ranch to learn how to teach Lean entrepreneurship to K-12 students. — We Can Do Better than Teaching Students How to Run a Lemonade Stand Over the last few years it’s become … Continue reading »
How to Find the Right Co-Founders
How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? Surprisingly if you’ve filled out the business model canvas you already know who you need. ——- I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup. She started … Continue reading »
Why Translational Medicine Will Never be the Same
There have been 2 or 3 courses in my entire education that have changed the way I think. This is one of those. Hobart Harris Professor and Chief, Division of General Surgery at UCSF For the past three years the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps has been teaching our nations best scientists how to build a Lean Startup. … Continue reading »
How To Think Like an Entrepreneur: The Inventure Cycle
The Lean Startup is a process for turning ideas into commercial ventures. Its premise is that startups begin with a series of untested hypotheses. They succeed by getting out of the building, testing those hypotheses and learning by iterating and refining minimal viable products in front of potential customers. That’s all well and good if you already have an … Continue reading »
Why Founders Should Know How to Code
“By knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist.” — Book of Five Rings A startup is not just about the idea, it’s about testing and then implementing the idea. A founding team without these skills is likely dead on arrival. —- I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and … Continue reading »
How Investors Make Better Decisions: The Investment Readiness Level
Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Other than “I’ll know it when I see it”, there’s no formal way for an investor to assess project maturity or quantify risks. Other than … Continue reading »
I-Corps @ NIH – Pivoting the Curriculum
We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum. We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. — Over the last three years the Lean LaunchPad class has started to replace the last century’s “how to write a business plan” classes as the foundation for entrepreneurial … Continue reading »
Innovating Municipal Government Culture
D.R. Widder is the Vice President of Innovation and holds the Steve Blank Innovation Chair at Philadelphia University. He’s helping city government in Philadelphia become more innovative by applying Lean startup methods and Philadelphia University’s innovation curriculum. I asked him to share an update on his work on teaching lean techniques to local governments. —- This February Philadelphia University and … Continue reading »
Corporate Acquisitions of Startups: Why Do They Fail?
For decades large companies have gone shopping in Silicon Valley for startups. Lately the pressure of continuous disruption has forced them to step up the pace. More often than not the results of these acquisitions are disappointing. What can companies learn from others’ failed efforts to integrate startups into large companies? The answer – there are two types of integration strategies, … Continue reading »
New Lessons Learned from Berkeley and Stanford Lean LaunchPad Classes
Our Stanford and Berkeley Lean LaunchPad classes are over for this year, and as usual we learned as much from teaching the teams as the teams did from us. Here are a few of the Lessons Learned from these two classes. — Have each team talk to 10 customers before the class starts Each year we learn … Continue reading »
ESADE Business School Commencement Speech
President Bieto, Dean Sauquet, members of the faculty, distinguished guests, and ladies and gentlemen….Thank you for the kind introduction. I’m honored to be at a university noted for knowledge, and in a city with 2000 years of history – home of Gaudí one of the 20th century’s greatest innovators. I’d like to start with a request. … Continue reading »
Why Internal Ventures are Different from External Startups
Henry Chesbrough is known as the father of Open Innovation and wrote the book that defined the practice. Henry is the Faculty Director of the Garwood Center for Corporate Innovation, at U.C. Berkeley in the Haas Business School. Henry and I teach a corporate innovation class together. His thoughts follow: Thanks to Steve for the opportunity to … Continue reading »
Get the Heck Out of the Building in Founders School Part 2
With a ~$2 billion endowment the Kauffman Foundation is the largest non-profit focused on entrepreneurship in the world. Giving away $80 million to every year (~$25 million to entrepreneurial causes) makes Kauffman the dominant player in the entrepreneurship space. Kauffman launched Founders School – a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups … Continue reading »