Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I presented to 1,000’s of entrepreneurs, talked to 17 startups, gave 12 lectures, had 9 interviews, chatted with 8 VC’s, sat on 4 panels, talked policy with 2 government ministers, 2 members of parliament, 1 head of a public pension fund and was in 1 TV-documentary. Toxic Business Press and Contradictory Government Incentives.

Finland 324

Finland Naming Russia Government 324

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 28, 2014

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. Building a Government Innovation Curriculum. Here’s the story of our journey.

Government 301

Government Philadelphia Lean Customer Development 301

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 272

Maryland Lean DC Virginia 272

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 238

Lean Technical Review Government Programming 238

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. The Chinese government must be laughing hysterically over U.S. When the Chinese government censors (run by their propaganda department ) shutdown access to yet another U.S. Most of their parents still tell them to work for the government or a big company. Of course “copy” is too strong a word.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

government to help them innovate faster– not just kind of fast, but 10x the number of initiatives in 1/5 the time. The first, the notion of the “ ambidextrous organization ” from O’Reilly and Tushman , posits that companies that want to do continuous innovation need to execute their core business model while innovating in parallel.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Over my career as a serial entrepreneur I observed that since the late 1990s, no early-stage Silicon Valley investor had used business plans to screen investments. Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. The Business Plan is Dead.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

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 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

This meant the class was team-based, Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering) and experiential – where the students, rather than being presented with all of the essential information, must discover that information rapidly for themselves.

Lean 294

Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 294

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

Second, this class – which is built on the idea of interviewing customers/beneficiaries and stakeholders in person – now had to do all their customer discovery via a computer screen. How on earth would customer interviews work via video? At first this seemed to be a fatal stake through the heart of the class.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

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 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of this century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. This new framework can act as the front-end of Customer Development.

Lean 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. The Chinese government must be laughing hysterically over U.S. When the Chinese government censors (run by their propaganda department ) shutdown access to yet another U.S. Most of their parents still tell them to work for the government or a big company. Of course “copy” is too strong a word.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

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

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As we prepared for the new Hacking for Defense class at Stanford, we had to stop and ask ourselves: How do we use the Business Model Canvas if the primary goal is not to earn money, but to fulfill a mission? In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue?

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 21, 2017

I was in Boston and was interviewed by The Growth Show about my current thinking about innovation in companies and government agencies.The interviewer was great and managed to get me to summarize several years of learning in one podcast. 6:22 What’s Customer Development. 17:08 Government Agency innovation limitations.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Lean Government Boston 222

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 9, 2018

They use the Business Model (or Mission Model ) Canvas to keep track of their key hypotheses and then rapidly test them by talking to customers and iterating their Minimal Viable Products. Regulated marketplaces are ones that have significant government regulation to promote (ostensibly) the public interest.

Marketing 321

Marketing Startup Government SEC 321

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2020

He explained that companies have a penchant for continually improving sustaining products by adding more features to solve existing customer problems, and while this maximized profit, it was a trap. Over time, I realized that was wrong – large companies executed known business models, while startups searched for them.

Lean 428

Lean Business Model Government Agile 428

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 295

China Government Russia Acquisition 295

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

I presented to thousands of entrepreneurs, talked to 17 startups, gave 12 lectures, had nine interviews, chatted with eight VC's, sat on four panels, talked policy with two government ministers, two members of parliament, one head of a public pension fund and was in one TV documentary. A government that's trying to help, but gets in the way.

Finland 158

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

The program is funded by the Colombian government and modeled after the NSF Innovation-Corps program created and built by my partner and co-author Steve Blank. this may well be the most ambitious government-sponsored startup catalyst effort on the globe. Other than the NSF Innovation-Corps program in the U.S.,

Colombia 321

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 321

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Teams are continuing their relentless interviewing of customers, or beneficiaries as we call them in this class. The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Teams are continuing their relentless interviewing of customers, or beneficiaries as we call them in this class. The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

The program is funded by the Colombian government and modeled after the NSF Innovation-Corps program created and built by my partner and co-author Steve Blank. this may well be the most ambitious government-sponsored startup catalyst effort on the globe. Other than the NSF Innovation-Corps program in the U.S.,

Colombia 271

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 271

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 320

Programming Incubator Leadership Silicon Valley 320

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Established businesses execute business models while startups search for them. I was a lone voice inside one of the country’s leading business schools challenging the conventional wisdom of the last 40 years, proposing that everything we were teaching about starting companies was wrong.

Lean 221

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 221

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

When you take money from investors their business model becomes yours. Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. How do we attract, keep and grow customers?

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

The eight teams spoke to over 820 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. Followed by an 8-minute slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the presentations are worth a watch. Team: IntelliSense.

Oakland 266

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

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.

Lean 248

Lean Incubator Business Model Georgia 248

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

Lean Start-up Connection: Business Model Canvas. We figured our key partners would include consumers (to contribute data much like Wikipedia’s users), manufacturers (to keep their product information updated) and the US government (to supply datasets to power our content). Lean Start-up Connection: Customer Development.

Lean 293

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 293

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

They will be relegated to creating better mousetraps or cloning other countries’ business models. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he ran the Think Different ads, a brilliant marketing campaign to make Apple’s core customers believe that Apple was still fighting for the brand. Entrepreneurs as Dissidents.

Entrepreneur 335

Entrepreneur United States Customer Development Business Model 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Business Model Issues. government is the leading payer for most of health care, and under ObamaCare the government’s role in reimbursing for medical technology will increase. Business Model Issues. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Science and Industrial Policy , Teaching.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

There Ought to be a Law Nowadays there are laws that allow you to back out of a time-share condo contract, or used car purchase after seven days because even the government believes there are times when grown adults lose their minds and stand up and yell “Yes I believe, sign me up!” Make game, market, sell, profit?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

In fact, at the time (1996-1997) we offered both a downloadable product, that our customers could install on their own servers, and a “hosted-offering”, which came to be known as “On-Demand”, then the “ASP” (Application Service Provider) model, and today we call it “SaaS” (Software as a Service). Today, we call that an “Embed-Code”.

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

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 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. It’s time to ask why startup board governance has failed to keep pace with innovation. Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281