PODCAST · business
Customer Development for Startups
by Marcos Polanco
Steve Blank, eight-time entrepreneur and now a business school professor at Stanford, Columbia and Berkeley, shares his hard-won wisdom as he pioneers entrepreneurship as a management science, combining Customer Development, Business Model Design and Agile Development. The conclusion? Startups are simply not small versions of large companies!
Episodes
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How to Set Up a Corporate Innovation Outpost That Works
This is the fourth in a series about corporate innovation co-authored with Evangelos Simoudis. Evangelos and I are working on what we hope will become a book about the new model for corporate entrepreneurship. In our last post, we addressed the six key questions that senior management should...
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Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley – Going to Where the Action Is
This is the second in a series about the changing models of corporate innovation co-authored with Evangelos Simoudis. Evangelos and I are working on what we hope will become a book about the new model for corporate entrepreneurship.
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Innovation Outposts and The Evolution of Corporate R&D
I first met Evangelos Simoudis when he ran IBM’s Business Intelligence Solutions Division and then as CEO of his first startup Customer Analytics. Evangelos has spent the last 15 years as a Venture Capitalist, first at Apax Partners and later at Trident Capital. During the last three years he’s...
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Pixar, Artists, Founders and Corporate Innovation
In a recent workshop with a large company focused on the Innovation@50x process, I mentioned that founders and intraprenuers operate more like artists than accountants – on day one they see something no one else does. One of the innovators in the room said, “It sounds like you’re describing…
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Why Corporate Entrepreneurs are Extraordinary – the Rebel Alliance
I’ve spent this year working with corporations and government agencies that are adopting and adapting Lean Methodologies. The biggest surprise for me was getting schooled on how extremely difficult it is to be an innovator inside a company of executors.
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The 7 Deadly Healthcare Startup Sins
Todd Dunn is the Director of Innovation and runs the Intermountain Healthcare Transformation Lab, which is working to foster innovation in the healthcare industry. He’s now run several Lean LaunchPad classes and has seen a ton of healthcare startups. Here’s his advice for startups in this space.
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Lean Innovation Management – Making Corporate Innovation Work
I’ve been working with large companies and the U.S. government to help them innovate faster– not just kind of fast, but 10x the number of initiatives in 1/5 the time. A 50x speedup kind of fast. Here’s how.
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Organizational Debt is like Technical debt – but worse
Startups focus on speed since they are burning cash every day as they search for product/market fit. But over time code/hardware written/built to validate hypotheses and find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling. These shortcuts add up and become…
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Doubling Down On a Good Thing: The National Science Foundation's I-Corps Lite
I’ve known Edmund Pendleton from the University of Maryland as the Director of theD.C. National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps Node (a collaboration among the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, George Washington, and Johns Hopkins). But it wasn’t until seeing him lead the first I-Corps…
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Why Build, Measure, Learn – isn't just throwing things against the wall to see if they work
I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.” Unfortunately the Build, Measure, Learn diagram is the cause of that confusion. At first glance it seems...
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How One Startup Figured Out What Could Really Help Deaf People
Thibault Duchemin and his team applied for our Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley in 2014. We accepted them because it was clear Thibault was driven to solve a very personal problem – he grew up in a Deaf family, the only one who could hear. His team project was to provide automated aids for the...
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Hacking For Defense In Silicon Valley
In peacetime the U.S. military is an immovable and inflexible bureaucracy. In wartime it can adapt and adopt organizational change with startling speed. BMNT, a new Silicon Valley company, is combining the Lean Methods it learned in combat with the technology expertise and speed of startups.
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Getting to "Yes" for Corporate Innovation
I’ve been working with Roberto, the Chief Innovation Officer of a diversified company I’ll call Sprocket Industries.I hadn’t heard from Roberto in awhile and when we caught up, it was clear his initial optimism had faded. I listened as Roberto listed the obstacles to the new innovation program at...
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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...
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Blowing up the Business Plan at U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School
During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, science and engineering at both Stanford and U.C. Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. Stanford’s focus was Electronic Intelligence and those advanced microwave components and systems were useful in a variety of weapons…
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Life Science Startups Rising in the UK
Stephen Chambers spent 22 years in some of the most innovative companies in life science as the director of gene expression and then as a co-founder of his own company. Today he runs SynbiCITE, the UK’s synthetic biology consortium of 56 industrial partners and 19 Academic institutions located at...
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What Do I Do Now? The Startup Lifecycle
Last week I got a call from Patrick an ex-student I hadn’t heard from for 8 years. He was now the CEO of a company and wanted to talk about what he admitted was a “first world” problem. Over breakfast he got me up to date on his life since school (two non-CEO roles in startups,) but he wanted to...
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When Krave Jerky Showed up in Class with a $435,000 Check
I remind my students that I’m teaching them a methodology they can use the rest of their careers, not running an incubator. Every once in awhile a team ignores my advice and builds a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
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It's About Women Running Startups
“Why is it so hard for a woman to still get taken seriously by a venture capitalist?”
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Getting out of the building…by staying in the building!
The landscape for how to turn life science and health care technologies into viable companies has changed more in the last 3 years than in the last 30. New approaches to translational medicine have emerged. Our Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences is one of them. But a new class of life...
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I-Corps at the NIH: Evidence-based Translational Medicine
Over the last three years the National Science Foundation I-Corps has taught over 700 teams of scientists how to commercialize their technology and how to fail less, increasing their odds for commercial success.
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The Big Bang. The Lean LaunchPad explodes at University of Maryland
The University of Maryland is now integrating the Lean LaunchPad® into standard innovation and entrepreneurship courses across all 12 colleges within the University. Over 44 classes have embedded the business model canvas and/or Customer Discovery including a year-long course taken by every…
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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!
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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…
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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...
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The Business Model Canvas Gets Even Better – Value Proposition Design
Product/Market fit now has its own book. Alexander Osterwalder wrote it. Buy it.
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Watching My Students Grow
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 been three and a half years since I first designed and taught the Lean LaunchPad class and lots of...
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Watching Larry Ellison become Larry Ellison — The DNA of a Winner
In Oracle’s early days Kathryn Gould was the founding VP of Marketing, working there from 1982 to 1984. When I heard that Larry Ellison was stepping down as Oracle’s CEO I asked Kathryn to think about the skills she saw in a young Larry Ellison that might make today’s founders winners.
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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.
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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…
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Why Translational Medicine Will Never be The Same
For the past three years the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps has been teaching our nations best scientists how to build a Lean Startup. Close to 400 teams in robotics, computer science, materials science, geoscience, etc. have learned how to use business models, get out of the…
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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...
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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.
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Getting Lean in Education – By Getting Out of the Classroom
This week the National Science Foundation goes Lean on education by providing $1.2 million to educators who want to bring their classroom innovations to a wider audience.
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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…
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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.
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Why Lean May Save Your Life – The I-Corps @ NIH
Today the National Institutes of Health announced they are offering my Lean LaunchPad class (I-Corps @ NIH ) to commercialize Life Science.There may come a day that one of these teams makes a drug, diagnostic or medical device that saves your life.
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Hostages Strapped to the Tank: Coastal Commission Stories – Lesson 2
For six and a half years I served as a public official on the California Coastal Commission.Commissoner Badge Since it’s been a year since I resigned, it’s time to tell a few stories about what I learned as a Coastal Commissioner. Each and every month I learned something new about human nature,...
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Farming for Developers: Coastal Commission Stories – Lesson 1
Last week I got an email last week from a New York VC asking for advice about building a house in the California Coastal Zone. For six and a half years I served as a public official on the California Coastal Commission. The call reminded me that it’s been a year since I resigned, and it’s time to...
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Three Things I Learned on Commencement Day
In the last five years I’ve been at Commencement Day at universities around the world – a few times to receive awards and three times as the commencement speaker. But attending both my daughters’ college graduations this year helped me to see how things look from the other side of the podium.
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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...
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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…
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New Lessons Learned from Berkeley & 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.
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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...
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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.
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Get the Heck Out of the Building in Founder's 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.
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Beyond the Lemonade Stand: How to Teach High School Students Lean Startups
While the Lean LaunchPad class has been adopted by Universities and the National Science Foundation, the question we get is, “Can students in K-12 handle an experiential entrepreneurship class?” Hawken School has now given us an answer. Their seniors just completed the school’s first-ever…
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Why Companies are Not Startups
In the last few years we’ve recognized that a startup is not a smaller version of a large company. We’re now learning that companies are not larger versions of startups. There’s been lots written about how companies need to be more innovative, but very little on what stops them from doing so.
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Is This Startup Ready For Investment?
Since 2005 startup accelerators have provided cohorts of startups with mentoring, pitch practice and product focus. However, accelerator Demo Days are a combination of graduation ceremony and pitch contest, with the uncomfortable feel of a swimsuit competition. Other than “I’ll know it when I see...
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How to Be Smarter than Your Investors – Continuous Customer Discovery
Teams that build continuous customer discovery into their DNA will become smarter than their investors, and build more successful companies.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Steve Blank, eight-time entrepreneur and now a business school professor at Stanford, Columbia and Berkeley, shares his hard-won wisdom as he pioneers entrepreneurship as a management science, combining Customer Development, Business Model Design and Agile Development. The conclusion? Startups are simply not small versions of large companies!
HOSTED BY
Marcos Polanco
CATEGORIES
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Customer Development for Startups currently has 100 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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Steve Blank, eight-time entrepreneur and now a business school professor at Stanford, Columbia and Berkeley, shares his hard-won wisdom as he pioneers entrepreneurship as a management science, combining Customer Development, Business Model Design and Agile Development. The conclusion? Startups are...
How often does Customer Development for Startups release new episodes?
Customer Development for Startups has 100 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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Who hosts Customer Development for Startups?
Customer Development for Startups is created and hosted by Marcos Polanco.
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