Steve Blank

It’s been almost a decade since we first started teaching the Lean Methodology. It’s remade entrepreneurship education, startup practice and innovation in companies and the government. But in all that time, we haven’t gotten a large group of educators together to talk about what it’s been like to teach Lean or the impact it’s had in their classrooms and beyond. It dawned on us that with 10 years of Lessons Learned to explore, now would be a good time.

So, for the first time ever, we’re getting all educators from all these groups together for a “share best practices” summit at my ranch – December 4th – 5th.

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100,000 students, one class at a time
A few months ago with the folks at VentureWell, the non-profit that puts on the Lean LaunchPad Educator classes  mentioned, “You know we’ve trained over 800 educators at hundreds of colleges and universities around the world to teach your class…” Say what???

It still seems like yesterday that Ann Miura-Ko and I were creating a new class – the Lean LaunchPad at Stanford to teach students an alternative to how to write a business plan.

If you can’t see the video click here

I quickly did the math. 800 educators – times 15 or so students per year – times almost ten years. Wow. It’s possible that 100,000 students have gone through some form of the class.

Add that to the 5,000 or more of our nation’s best science researchers who’ve gotten out the building (in this case their labs) who’ve gone through the National Science Foundation I-Corps program, (designed to help turn our country’s best academic research into companies), or the I-Corps @ the National Institute of Health or I-Corps @ the Department of Energy. And then add another 5,000 more who’ve gone through a version of I-Corps inside the Department of Defense.

It made me think about the variants of the class we’ve created. We started Hacking for Defense and Diplomacy almost four years ago. Hacking for Defense is now supported by the National Security Innovation Network and has put hundreds of students in 24 universities through the program. Hacking for Cities and Hacking for Non-profits have followed at U.C. Berkeley. Hacking for Oceans is coming next.

Yet none of these instructors across these disciplines have met. Or shared what they’ve learned.

So lets’ do it.

Educators Sharing Best Practices
On December 4th-5th, Jerry Engel, Pete Newell and I are hosting an event at the ranch for a select group of educators that have lead the Lean Innovation movement.

We’re going to cover:

• The effectiveness of our programs [including I-Corps and Hacking for Defense]: What we have learned so far from the data and how to make it better
• Customer Discovery and Lean Innovation in Academic Settings vs Non-Academic Settings such as incubators and accelerators
• Tech Commercialization: innovators vs. entrepreneurs –  motivating scientists and engineers
• Lean Innovation in the Enterprise, Not-for-Profit and Government – what’s different
• International: Success and Challenges of Lean Innovation and Customer Discovery in  Europe and Asia [and South America? Australia?]
• What’s next for Lean and entrepreneurial education
• and much more…

Lessons Learned:

• I’m hosting the Summit of Lean Innovation Educators at my ranch in December.
• We’re bringing together a group to capture best practices and define a vision for what lies ahead.
• Stay tuned for what we learn
• And if you think you should be here, click here and let us know why

Filed under: Educators Summit, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching |