Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

They accomplished their goal, but at a huge, unanticipated cost: the processes and committees they designed ended up strangling innovation. An existing company or government organization is primarily organized for day-to-day execution of its current business processes or mission. Who are the customers? There’s a much better way.

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Incubator Curation Engineer Government 316

Steve Blank

JANUARY 15, 2017

It’s a model for a government program that’s gotten the balance between public/private partnerships just right. The bill directs the expansion of I-Corps to additional federal agencies and academic institutions, as well as through state and local governments.

Lean 262

Lean Technical Review Government Programming 262

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

However, there’s a growing belief that the “design preferences” of Chinese consumers are just bad design. TenCents WeChat , (designed for an international market) is the first incredibly popular app in China to dramatically raise the bar for what a good user interface and user experience looks and feels like.

China 326

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 326

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2014

Over 44 classes have embedded the business model canvas and/or Customer Discovery including a year-long course taken by every single one of its bioengineering majors. We didn’t know it at the time, but with that investment we had paid for front-row VIP seats to witness the origins of Customer Development and the Lean Startup.

Maryland 277

Maryland Lean DC Virginia 277

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

This post is about the how the Chinese government engineered technology clusters. Of all the Chinese government programs, the Torch Program is the one program that kick-started Chinese high-tech innovation and startups. government’s SBIR and STTR programs. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

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Programming Technical Review SBIR China 175

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

As the emeritus Chief Technology Officer of the United States, he still connects government and Silicon Valley. He’ll talk about making a profit and making a difference in a conversation with New Media Ventures’ Christie George. Todd Park convened the team that saved Obamacare.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

the failure rate of new ventures (startups had no formal rules and were a hit or miss proposition), the slow adoption rate of new technologies by the government and large companies. In the past, the time to build a first product release was measured in months or even years as startups executed the founder’s vision of what customers wanted.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

However, there’s a growing belief that the “design preferences” of Chinese consumers are just bad design. TenCents WeChat , (designed for an international market) is the first incredibly popular app in China to dramatically raise the bar for what a good user interface and user experience looks and feels like.

China 218

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 218

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

In contrast, designing AI-driven enterprise software or building dating apps are comparatively simple problems.) Startups vs. Large Companies vs. Governments Innovation at Speed for Horizon 1, 2 and 3 (Managing the Portfolio across Horizons) What is Systems Thinking? Co mpanies also face Wicked problems.

Lean 295

Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 295

Steve Blank

AUGUST 25, 2021

A week ago I got invited to an “innovation hero” award ceremony at a government agency. Having seen this scenario play out multiple times at multiple large corporations and government agencies, I could’ve repeated the speech her agency director made at the ceremony verbatim. An Organizational Design Problem.

Non-Compete 436

Non-Compete Government Incubator Design 436

Steve Blank

JANUARY 15, 2017

It’s a model for a government program that’s gotten the balance between public/private partnerships just right. The bill directs the expansion of I-Corps to additional federal agencies and academic institutions, as well as through state and local governments.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Review Government Programming 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

Analyzing a case in the classroom, removed from the realities of a new venture, adds little to an entrepreneur’s preparation for the chaos, uncertainty, and conflicting customer responses that all entrepreneurs face. The reality is that most business plans don’t survive first contact with customers.

Lean 436

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 436

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Lean 334

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 334

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 26, 2009 A real Customer Advisory Board A reader recently asked on a previous post about the technique of having customers periodically produce a “state of the company&# progress report. Many companies seek to involve customers directly in the creation of their products.

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Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Steve Blank

JULY 6, 2016

Then the question is, will their governments allow them to use it and if not, are there workarounds? . Much of what we see is really developed indigenously. This has been a very powerful way of bringing some of the smartest young minds, the most energetic people, into government to do it quickly but also not to make it life servitude.

North Korea 133

North Korea SEC Silicon Valley Entrepreneur 133

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. It taught lean theory ( business model design , customer development and agile engineering) and practice. Even those who asked for them never read them. And there it was. Berkeley-wide.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 31, 2018

Company/Government Innovation. Government Innovation. 52:08: How governments innovate. government goes Lean. 56:00: Customer Development versus Design Thinking. Government Innovation. 52:08: How governments innovate. government goes Lean. 22:03: How I-Corps and H4X were born.

Lean 190

Lean Government Customer Development Founder 190

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Defense and Intelligence organizations drove the pace of innovation in Silicon Valley by providing research and development dollars to universities, and defense companies built weapons systems that used the Valley’s first microwave devices and semiconductor components. Government and the enterprise are now followers rather than leaders.

Restful 238

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 238

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

We see this all the time at Forward Partners where we invest right from the idea stage and most of the companies get a first version of their product live for less than £30k (that generally includes founder salaries and time spent doing customer research). The second development is SEIS and EIS.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

Palantir is a deep technical play and we had a lot of code to write just to fill out the product vision that we had already validated with potential customers; it took us two straight years of development to go from early prototypes to software that could be used in production. It wasn’t always this way.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. - First Principles.

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2018

We describe their efforts as “heroic” because all the established procedures and processes in a large company are primarily designed to execute and support the current business model. Some examples of innovation tools are Customer Development, Design Thinking, User-Centric Design, Business Model Canvas, Storytelling, etc.

Programming 324

Programming Incubator Leadership Silicon Valley 324

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

Silicon Valley 200

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 200

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 6, 2020

Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. Over the last few decades, the ability of the DoD to design and even understand modern software design had atrophied.

Technology 420

Technology Afghanistan Iraq Vietnam 420

Steve Blank

JANUARY 8, 2019

It’s one of the quickest ways to describe and prioritize innovation ideas in a large company or government agency. However, in the 21 st century the Three Horizons model has a fatal flaw that could put companies out of business and government agencies behind their adversaries. Innovate better than the disrupters.

China 300

China Government Russia Acquisition 300

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Stanford designed Klystrons producing 2½ Megawatts were manufactured by Varian and Litton would power the radar in the BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) built at the height of the cold war.) Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab.

Silicon Valley 152

Silicon Valley RSS California Government 152

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Yet everyone – investors, entrepreneurs, academics — expected new startups to follow the same practices that worked for large companies – write a business plan, forecast 5-year sales projections and build the product without ever talking to customers. The National Science Foundation adopted it. Congratulations class of 2016.

Lean 223

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 223

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

By 1991, 70% of the Torch funded startups were getting bank financing for expansion and later stages of the new ventures, with local governments acting as guarantors. Being designated as a Torch Program startup gave banks comfort to provide loans to these ventures for technology commercialization. Like the U.S.

Venture Capital 275

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 275

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Intellectual Property At the next class I said, “You all ought to get out and start talking to customers on day one, and get early feedback on your idea. Don’t share the details of your manufacturing process with customers until you’ve locked up your intellectual property.” Just get out of the building.” Yeah, I said.

Vertical 154

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 154

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. By 1961 its customers now included our intelligence agencies. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. The “customers” in Washington had never seen anything like it. There were no venture investors.

Silicon Valley 190

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 190

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Dinner in a Strange Land When I was in my mid 20′s working at ESL, I was sent overseas to a customer site where the customers were our three-letter intelligence agencies. But it was a bit incongruous to hear her get wound up and rail against our government and the very people we were all working for. Reply Michael F.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 206

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

The eight teams spoke to over 820 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. Our keynote speaker was Palmer Luckey , founder of Oculus and the designer of the Oculus Rift. He’s now the CEO/founder of the AI-focussed defense contractor Anduril Industries.

Oakland 277

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 277

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Video Games At SuperMac , Peter Barrett was the witty and creative 24-year old Australian engineer who had designed several of our most successful products, culminating with the software for the Video Spigot. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. I had no idea what I wanted to do next, and would get paid to think about it?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

government reengineered its approach to building weapons. In a major break from the past, where the military designed all its own weapons, 10,000 scientists and engineers from academia worked in civilian-run weapons labs (most headquartered in universities) in an organization called the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD).

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

How to Enchant Your Customer - How to Change the World , November 23, 2010 I love to do business with small businesses—in-store, online, for myself, for others, for pleasure, for work—it doesn’t matter to me. No Business Plan Survives First Contact With A Customer – The 5.2 Your First Iteration of an Idea Will Be Wrong. So what gives?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2012

While many government agencies use Technology Readiness Levels to measure a projects technical maturity, there are no standards around Business Maturity Levels. It doesn’t replace private capital with government funds. 2) Get the teams out of the building to test their hypotheses with prospective customers.

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Lean Incubator Business Model Georgia 257