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Joy Fairbanks shares a post that reviews the Lean Launchpad framework for business development.

A timeless framework for testing product/market fit is open to everyone. 

The creators of the Lean LaunchPad movement have been doing this for a while.  Steve Blank is a successful serial founder who launched his academic career and Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley at the request of Jerry Engel, the founding Executive Director of Cal’s Lester Center of Entrepreneurship.  A decade after its launch at Cal, Stanford, and Columbia, the Lean LaunchPad curriculum is taught across the globe at over 200 universities and many private and public accelerators.

The Lean LaunchPad method is an agile approach to business development focused on producing minimum viable offerings to solve customer needs in an iterative mechanism.  It is about constantly listening to what customers want, need, and will pay for in a dynamic environment.  What makes the strategy work is its emphasis on communication, collaboration, and the nonstop validation of product/market fit realized by agile execution.

A Lean LaunchPad class centers on a key business model framework (Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas) validated component by component by talking to hundreds of people.  It is mind boggling that mature companies do not use this approach throughout their entire organizations.  It could save what is left of the legacy retail sectors.  Imagine mobilizing everyone to talk regularly to existing and potential customers to validate product/market fit and prove revenue models?

Key points include:

• Collaboration
• Programming
• Agile execution

Read the full post, Collaboration in Practice: The Broad Relevance of the Lean LaunchPad Movement, on FairbanksVentureAdvisors.com.