Lean Startup

A B C D E H I L M P S T

Ambidextrous Organization

An organization, which demonstrably balances today’s business demands (exploitation) whilst being adaptive to changes in the external environment by innovating towards new products, services, and business models, which break with old industry logic and transcend industry boundaries (exploration). [ » read more ]

Business Model

A narrative of how a business works and makes money: it describes how it creates and delivers value to its customers at an appropriate cost and how it captures its share of value in turn. [ » read more ]

Business Model Fit

The inflection a startup reaches when it has gathered enough evidence to demonstrate that it is able to deliver its value proposition with an optimal profit, based on a scalable business model. [ » read more ]

Collaboration

A kind of teamwork in which a group of people works synchronously towards a shared goal. [ » read more ]

Cooperation

A kind of teamwork towards a shared goal characterized by short phases of task allocation (e.g. planning a customer interview together) and longer phases of individual work packages in sub-groups (e.g. doing the interview fieldwork). [ » read more ]

Coordination

A kind of teamwork in which a group collectively agrees on work packages to be done, which each sub-group or person will then carry out on their own. [ » read more ]

Culture Hack

The act of finding a mistake in an organization’s operating system and ‘helping to improve it’ by going against the usual way things are done. [ » read more ]

Design Sprint

A time-constrained, multi-day or week-long process based on design thinking which aims to reduce the risk of bringing a new product, service or feature to the market. [ » read more ]

Experience Mapping

A method used to visualize and illustrate an individual’s product/service experience as a customer of an organization. [ » read more ]

Hackathon

“An event, typically lasting several days, in which a large number of people meet to engage in collaborative computer programming.” (Oxford Dictionary) [ » read more ]

Innovation

We follow a very basic formula here: creativity + implementation = innovation. In non-commercial environments, this would be an idea that creates value because it got implemented. In commercial environments, it would be the introduction of something new to the market, or if you will, an invention that is commercialized. [ » read more ]

Innovation Barrier

Innovation barriers are organization-specific obstacles that internal innovators or intrapreneurs will run into when trying to push their idea or venture to implementation or market. [ » read more ]

Innovation Capability

The skills and knowledge required to bring innovation forward through the stages of discovery, incubation and acceleration, while managing their interfaces with the core organization with as little unproductive friction as possible. [ » read more ]

Innovation Ecosystem

This term is often used synonymously for ‘innovation system’ and can mean many different things at different levels. For more information, refer to the levels of an ‘ecosystem’. [ » read more ]

Innovation Fatigue

A phenomenon occurring with managers who have already tried different approaches or management ideas to innovation that didn’t produce the desired results. That experience makes them hesitant to try ‘new approaches’. [ » read more ]

Innovation Practice

The customary, habitual, or ‘expected’ procedure or way of doing innovation in an organization. Often driven by underlying management ideas, beliefs, or method(ologie)s. [ » read more ]

Innovation Strategy

The set of interrelated choices an organization makes on how to use innovation to win in the market. [ » read more ]

Innovation System

An innovation system, as understood at a company-level, designates the infrastructures for finding, developing, evaluating, and implementing new ideas and business models within an organization. It is the organization’s ‘operating system’ for innovation. [ » read more ]

Innovation System Design

The application of design and lean innovation thinking and proven change management approaches to the design of interventions to create a sustainable innovation system. [ » read more ]

Innovation Theater

Any episodic, PR-guided, or underfunded ‘innovation work’ which is staged to show people (investors, talent, general public) that innovation is happening, even though no tangible outcomes can be expected. [ » read more ]

Innovation Tourist

Low-performing (read: not intrinsically motivated) people from the core organization who are sent by their superiors into labs or innovation programs for several months, just ‘to get rid of them’ for a while. [ » read more ]

Innovation Vehicle

An entity or program in an organization's innovation support infrastructure — the innovation (management) system — which removes innovation barriers and helps innovation teams get certain jobs done. The jobs of the vehicles are often related to a certain phase in a product, service, or technology innovation life cycle. [ » read more ]

Innovation Zoo

A situation where resources are spread too thinly across too many ideas and there is not enough commitment to really double-down on investment in selecting the most promising options. [ » read more ]

Intrapreneurship

The act of behaving like/running a business like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization. [ » read more ]

Invention

According to U.S. Patent Law an invention is “a new, useful process, machine, improvement, etc., that did not exist previously and that is recognized as the product of some unique intuition or genius, as distinguished from ordinary mechanical skill or craftsmanship.” [ » read more ]

Lean Innovation

A combination of discovery, creation, and value delivery approaches in an organization’s innovation process. The goal is to reduce ‘waste’ in the pipeline of new business exploration projects. To name but a few examples of waste in this context: untested customer/problem/value proposition or business model assumptions, insufficient validation of prototypes/experiments with customers, or, even carrying forward political and zombie projects. Usually, three main methodologies are used in lean innovation: design thinking, Lean Startup, and ‘Lean processes’. [ » read more ]

A methodology that supports startups in their search for a product or service that customers value, and a viable business model to go with it. Lean Startup emphasizes validated learning through the performance of hypothesis-driven experimentation with customers in short development cycles. [ » read more ]

Lens

A specific way to view, comprehend and discuss the world guided by principles and an underlying philosophy. [ » read more ]

Management Innovation

When management subscribes to a new way of thinking and (radically) alters its own decision-making, organizational structures and processes to pave the way for wider organizational change. [ » read more ]

Method

We say: it’s a way of carrying out a particular task, which often comes as a detailed set of step-by-step instructions on what to do. The Oxford Dictionary says: it’s “a particular procedure for accomplishing or approaching something, especially a systematic or established one.” [ » read more ]

Method(ology) Misfit

The application of a methodology or method which was created for a particular context in a situation or environment to which it is poorly adapted to, or not applicable at all. [ » read more ]

Methodology

A largely codified set of processes and methods with an underpinning paradigm and theory which guides action. Often used in a particular area of study or activity. [ » read more ]

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

A very early version of a product with a specific value proposition and set of features: primarily built for learning and to (in)validate hypotheses with early adopters. [ » read more ]

Moonlighting

The act of working (often in secret) on an innovation (side) project without telling your employer or colleagues. [ » read more ]

Participant Fatigue

When users don’t want to participate in market or design research anymore due to a repeated overstraining of their ‘services’ and time. [ » read more ]

Phenomenology

The study of how people experience life. [ » read more ]

Pivot

The strategic course correction of a startup without a major change to the founders’ underlying vision. Often in the form of changes to one or more, but not all, elements of a new venture: product, team, business model or engine of growth. [ » read more ]

Platform

A platform is a set of solutions to problems that is made available to the members of an ecosystem through a set of access points or interfaces. [ » read more ]

Problem-Solution Fit

A problem-solution-fit occurs if a startup has proved both: 1) that there is a 'problem worth solving' for one or more clearly defined customer groups, and 2) that there is evidence that these customer groups would consider the value proposition of the solution the firm proposes. [ » read more ]

Product-Market Fit

Product-market fit means: you have collected evidence that your solution solves your customers' problem(s) in a way that they prefer over current alternative solutions; you have proof that they are willing to pay for it; and your service demonstrably gains its first traction in the market. [ » read more ]