How the LEAN approach benefits Early Adopters of new technology solutions?
The Lean Startup methodology assumes that every innovation is an experiment that tries to answer the question. The question is not “Can this product be built?” Instead, the questions are: “Should this product be built?” and “Can we build a sustainable business around this set of products and services?” This experiment is more than a theoretical question; it is the first product. If successful, it allows the manager to start his or her campaign: by registering early users, adding employees to each subsequent experiment or iteration and ultimately creating a product. By the time the product is ready for wide distribution, it will already have established customers, solve real problems and provide detailed specifications of what needs to be built.
The Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing innovations and delivering the desired product to customers faster. It’s not only for CEOs, it can be adapted by each of us in our daily jobs. The Lean Startup method teaches us how to drive Fundingbox – how to steer, when to turn and when to persevere – and grow it fast.
“The success of a company can be designed by following this process, which means that you can learn it and communicate it clearly.” – Eric Ries
If as a new hire you appeared for the first time at an innovation conference and quickly realized that those people speak a language that you don’t understand using key terms not commonly used in a traditional work environment, then you have not yet read Lean Startup. It’s not a newspeak, because this startup slang started building on the basis of a visionary book published in 2011.
LEAN management includes terms such as MVP (Minimum Value Product) and Pivot, which are examples of the dynamics of building a company in a LEAN way, following the Build-Measure-Learn structure, which introduces a continuous and constructive change in building a product that evolves based on feedback from the customer or end user.
How do we use the LEAN approach in Techfinders?
In Techfinders we have plenty of space for experimentation with Early Adopters in order to improve innovative products and services in a LEAN way!
Adopting the Build-Measure-Learn* philosophy has already started with our first Tech Transfer Toolkit used in older projects like INTEGRADDE or DIMOFAC).
And what is the magical factor in them? The experimenting with Early Adopters was taken to another level by the intensive use of our transversal communities via Early Adopter Programmes (EAP)
How do we do it in practice?
The technology developer builds the prototypes of products or services (Build**), we validate its traction through our communities using an Open Call mechanism (Measure) and we are analysing the identified Early Adopters profiles by assessing their willingness to pay (*Learn). This loop can be repeated as many times as any improvement appears or when we want to check a new segment of customers. It can be also used to challenge the consortium business model. In practice, it looks like this:
How do we use the LEAN approach working with companies?
In Techfinders we like the LEAN approach so much that we would like everybody to use it. And our obsession is visible also outside of the company.
We want you to join the crowd and ask us for a brief onboarding to our market validation services.
We will help you define your technology value Proposition, draw your buyer Personas, describe their customer journey and build hypotheses around them.
With our support you can start experimenting with your customer-centric vision of your department!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jakub Kruszelnicki is working on innovations since 2007 in the field of international R&D&I projects management and exploitation. His practical experience ranges from academia (Director of Technology Transfer Centre of Cracow University of Technology; Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona) via private industrial research and its exploitation (LEITAT Technological Center; Knowledge Innovation Market) through researching european innovation ecosystems (H2020 OaSIS) as well as co-founding accelerator (Creative Labs) and Transfer of Technologies developed via cascade funding sources (Fundingbox).
Connecting those fields of expertise Jakub is exploring the technological and business aspects of innovations and developing tailor-made methodologies for public and private market.