cyberlaxamana

by Greg Ayres I have been reflecting on lean startup management practices in the context of new business development in a big corporation.  Whether large or small, young or old, innovative companies must find product market fit and/or refine and extend their business models.  I believe that the lean startup method can be successful for any company with a well aligned organizational culture. Without a doubt, big companies’ product development processes are better established than those of startups.  This leads to a sense that launching new products or businesses in a large enterprise is a far different task from doing so in a startup; and thus, the lean startup methodology cannot be employed successfully by large firms.  In fact, on the surface a large organization has a few key advantages over a young company implementing lean management techniques.  These include superior access to customers, flexible developer resources, an experienced team of internal testers...

by Anonymous I have constantly found myself thinking through the new lean startup concepts throughout this class and wondering how they could be successfully applied to large organizations. The definition of a startup and a large corporation are completely different in every critical way: access to capital, human resources, brand awareness etc. And yet, large corporations are constantly trying to find ways to “incubate”, develop, promote and support lean startup methodologies. Over the past few years, I have seen how two large companies have tried to create a “lean” environment within their companies. The common trade-offs are: Uncertainty vs. Scaling: Startups ideally try to reduce the amount of uncertainty through minimum viable products (MVPs), while corporations require accountable business plans and projections that force premature scaling and disincentives pivoting. Effectively there are rarely corporate structures or environments that even permit anything beyond setting a visio...

by Qingxi Wang The core of lean startup practices is hypothesis testing process, a systematic approach for validating a new business’ proposed business model. With appropriate adaption, this systematic approach could and should be used for new business development in big corporations. Meanwhile, there is likely to be significant extra challenges during the process. There are generally three main stages in developing a new business in a big corporation – concept stage, design stage and launching stage. During the concept stage, a new idea is proposed and basic technical and economic analysis is done. In the design stage, a business plan is drawn, which includes the team structure, operational process and solutions, sales model and detailed economic analysis. After winning some buy-in of the business plan, the new business might be launched. During the launching stage, hypothesis for the new business model need to be tested. A systematic approach for validating and revising assumptions i...

by Ashvini Thammaiah As someone who’s not going to spend much time at a startup in the near future, I find it interesting to think about how well Lean methodologies can be applied at big corporations.  From my experience at larger companies and my understanding of the methodologies, I think it would be difficult to implement Lean methodologies well given the current systems in place at larger companies. Product Development Large corporations may try to apply the iterative short work cycles of the Agile methodology in their product development.  However, the decision making processes at large corporations severely mute the power of this methodology.  Given the financial planning systems and the need to product quarterly results, large corporations tend to be risk averse and resist deviating from plans made during their annual planning period.  Any changes that are attempted go through numerous meetings to get buy in from all the different key decision-makers across di...