Lean Startup Concepts & How to Become a Lean Startup

The Lean Startup concept has it roots to Toyota’s transformative Lean Manufacturing method for waste minimization and productivity increase.

Lean Startup elevates these goals to incorporate continuous improvement, identifying the big picture associated with each progress phase and using the continuous feedback loop to better engage end-users and relevant stakeholders.

Let’s take a look.

What is Lean Startup?

Lean Startup is a methodology designed to validate a business hypothesis through short and rapid release cycles of product features, business models, and strategies.

The concept is designed to reduce market risk by validating learning through the release of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). That is, designing a low-barrier to entry first version of a product, so that it can start driving value sooner, and then iterating on it consistently to add more improvements and functionality.

Lean Startup embraces getting rid of waste:

(Learn about Lean Six Sigma, another Lean offshoot.)

Becoming a Lean Startup

For startup firms and small organizations, the concept of Lean Startup is easy to adopt considering their agility to transition into new market segments and strategies without incurring significant cost and risk.

For large enterprises however, every product release is received by a larger market and has to be scaled across the customer-base to identify the true value to end-users and business. This means that the initial cost and risks associated with transitioning to new business models, product features, and strategies can outweigh the proposed benefits of making the changes.

However, failing to adapt to market changes and evolving customer expectations also risk competitive strength against fast moving startups.

Consider the case example of Uber. The startup originally tested an MVP offering a crowd-sourced ride-sharing platform. The idea was welcomed and validated by the first set of users and the company was able to quickly expand to more cities, countries, and eventually disrupted the global transportation industry. The idea of crowd-sourced service sharing platform was not entirely new, but car manufacturers and transportation service providers failed to replicate similar business models, services, and the agility to disrupt the industry.