Part of Customer Development is understanding which customers make sense for your business.
The Lockheed Skunk Works, led by Kelly Johnson, was responsible for its Advanced Development Projects - everything from the P-80, the first U.S. jet fighter plane, to the U-2 and A-12 spy planes.
Customer discovery is the process of translating a founder's vision for the company into hypotheses about each component of the business model and creating a set of experiments to test each hypothesis.
The Lean Startup process builds new ventures more efficiently. It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses, and agile engineering to build minimum viable products.
The Value Proposition Canvas functions like a plug-in to the Business Model Canvas and zooms into the value proposition and customer segment to describe the interactions between customers and product more explicitly and in more detail.
At the intersection of food science and technology, food replacement startups are creating substitutes for the basic components of meals as well as replacements for complete meals.
While 'The Owner's Manual' is not a formula for guaranteed success by any means, we're confident it will help reduce the failure rate of most startups that use our Customer Development process.
If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job.
It's worth noting that everything - from the Internet to electric cars, genomic sequencing, mobile apps, and social media - were pioneered by startups, not existing companies.
A startup is not just about the idea: it's about testing and then implementing the idea. A founding team without these skills is likely dead on arrival.
Startups have finite time and resources to find product/market fit before they run out of money. Therefore startups trade off certainty for speed, adopting 'good enough decision making' and iterating and pivoting as they fail, learn, and discover their business model.
Value Proposition Design is a 'must have' for anyone creating a new venture. It captures the core issues around understanding and finding customer problems and designing and validating potential solutions.
The Lean Startup is a process for turning ideas into commercial ventures. Its premise is that startups begin with a series of untested hypotheses. They succeed by getting out of the building, testing those hypotheses and learning by iterating and refining minimal viable products in front of potential customers.
As I've gotten older, I've come to grips that the unexamined life is what works for most people. Most take what they learned in school, get a job, marry, buy a house, have a family, become a great parent, serve their god, community and country, hang with friends, and live a good life. And for them that's great.
The Columbia Startup Lab is a visible symbol of how the university is making entrepreneurship an integral part of all colleges at the university.
The art of entrepreneurship and the science of Customer Development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. It's understanding who to listen to and why.
My imagination ran 24/7, and to me, every problem was a challenge to solve and new product to create. It wasn't until I started teaching that I realized that not everyone's head worked the same way.
Great entrepreneurial DNA is comprised of leadership, technological vision, frugality, and the desire to succeed.
Innovation in an existing company is not just the sum of great technology, key acquisitions, or smart people. Corporate innovation needs a culture that matches and supports it.
Entrepreneurial education in grades K-12, if it exists at all, still focuses on teaching potential entrepreneurs small business entrepreneurship - the equivalent of 'how to run a lemonade stand.'
