How the Meme Culture has Subverted Lean Innovation

Everyone knows the phrases and concepts associated with lean innovation, but most people are applying them incorrectly or simply haphazardly.

I’ve been teaching and practicing Design Thinking, Business Model Design, Customer Discovery and Lean Startup with students, academics, startups and corporations for over 8 years now, and I’ve witnessed how this global movement, a new way of evaluating business opportunities and building businesses, has permeated into entrepreneurship culture and now into foundations of corporate innovation.

Specifically, everyone is now familiar with the phrases of “Business Model Canvas”, “Get Out of the Building” and “Build an MVP”.

On one hand, the dissemination of these terms makes my life easier; there’s no need to give the same definitions and classic examples of these concepts at every turn. However, at the same time, this familiarity has already bred a lackadaisical attitude toward truly understanding what the concepts mean and how they should be applied.

When these concepts are boiled down to a catchy phrase, or a slogan on a T-shirt, all the meaning behind them are lost and people tend to run with what they assume they understand, rather than truly seeking to dig beneath the surface and apply the methodology rigorously.

Just recently, Dec. 4–5 2019, I attended the Lean Innovation Educators Summit in Santa Cruz with almost 100 other similar educators and practitioners from around the world, led by the likes of Steve Blank, Alex Osterwalder, and others who launched this movement. And, unsurprisingly, complaints against the “meme”-ification of the methodology is a global phenomenon, specifically from the giants who launched those concepts to begin with.

Let me give you a few examples:

“Create a Business Model Canvas”

Everyone knows about the nine blocks of the canvas as it has become the de facto replacement to the tired business plan. However, as I’ve observed, everyone simply fills it out as a simpler version of that business plan, a “paint-by-the-numbers” exercise for entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurs, students and corporate employees alike view it has a homework assignment, to be done quickly and then put away, rather than the prototyping and critical analysis tool it was meant to be.

The focus is on filling out each part of the business model canvas, rather than seeking to generate value and differentiation through the interaction of those different blocks. The focus is on completing the exercise, rather than using it as a template to spot assumptions and identify pivot points.

During the conference, Alex Osterwalder, at the start of his talk stated,

“I hope, as practitioners, you all see that the business model canvas is not just about filling out the 9 blocks but rather examining the interactions between those blocks and understanding the patterns in their inherent models.”

While his invention has spread across the globe, the true message of that invention seems to have not quite made it as far.

“Get Out of the Building”

The Customer Discovery Methodology has been simplified to this single phrase, and everyone pursuing new projects have been comfortable with this concept — get out and talk to customers. And while it is good that people are getting out to talk to customers, there is rarely a systematic and thoughtful approach to it… it is simply, “I talked with customers and everyone loves my idea, so I’m moving forward.”

For anyone that has actually read Steve Blank 573-page tome, The Startup Owner’s Manual, they will realize that “Get Out of the Building” is just the toehold to understanding his philosophy: how to learn about all the uncertainty surrounding a startup, how to actually pull out insights from those conversations rather than focusing on the validation of a particular idea, and how to systematically work through all the assumptions/hypotheses in the business model to arrive at a solution that works.

So while it’s good to “get out and talk to customers”, it is equally important to understand why we are talking to customers, what we want to learn from those customers, and how to understand and interpret what customers are saying (or not saying).

“Build an MVP”

When someone mentions Lean Startup, immediately someone else will bring up the concept of the Minimum Viable Product. In fact, you talk to any wanna-preneur and they will be sure to tell you they are working on their MVP. I would surmise a guess that the usage of MVP as Minimum Viable Product in social media has eclipsed its former meaning of Most Valuable Player.

And while MVP entering the common nomenclature is a great development, the fact that everyone rushes to build one is not so good. Because the phrase includes the word “product”, everyone focuses on building something rather than the true intent of the MVP, which was to experiment and learn. And because they want to keep it “lean”, they tend to build something with low-functionality and equally low-value for the customer, not actually delivering on the customer experience that is promised.

In Alex Osterwalder latest book, Testing Business Ideas, he details 44 different types of experiments that can/should be conducted before getting to actually building a product, even a minimal and viable one at that. Unfortunately, most people start testing their business idea by building an MVP, rather than performing any of these learning experiments, rather than even talking with customers first, which is the complete opposite of the intent set forth by Eric Ries when he wrote The Lean Startup.

So What?

As educators and practitioners of Lean Innovation, we must get students, entrepreneurs and businesses back to the fundamentals of these concepts in order to build businesses that work. Don’t let people walk around claiming to know Lean Innovation without having read the books and them concepts into practice. Don’t let Lean Innovation just become the latest fad but doesn’t fundamentally change the way we approach building new businesses.

Let’s stop watering down the concepts to slogans and memes that people will understand, but help them to really understand why this approach is so revolutionary, and difficult to implement at the same time.

Make Innovation Work

Core Strateji is a strategy consulting firm that specializes in supporting leading companies to transform into ambidextrous organizations. Are you ready to move your innovation activities forward?

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