I recently stumbled across the “Lean Start-Up” Process, a term coined by Eric Ries, 31, an engineer, entrepreneur and blogger. His inspiration was the lean manufacturing process, fine-tuned in Japanese factories decades ago – which focused on eliminating any work or investment that doesn’t produce value for customers. This is a concept I am familiar with in my solo, virtual law practice – operate lean and focus only on providing good legal service. Any effort or energy expended otherwise is of no benefit to me nor my clients.
Part of the this process also involves developing a “minimum viable product” that will please some customers, and then build the business from there, responding and reacting rapidly to market responses to product changes.
This process kind of precludes developing a formal business plan – which I do not totally agree with. I see too many startups, particularly tech startups that do not have the luxury of significant outside funding and investors/advisors that bring business acumen to the table , flounder on the business side of things even when they have developed a great application. Sure there are exceptions, and a business plan is not always absolutely necessary – but without some sort of focus on making a startup idea / startup application into a real, money making, viable business entity – long terms success is difficult to come by.
Below is a great slideshow that illustrates the process.
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- Why Startups are Agile and Opportunistic – Pivoting the Business Model (tpgblog.com)
- Thinking Inside the Box: Eric Ries On Creating Startups Within Large Organizations (readwriteweb.com)
- What Start-Ups Can Teach Big Companies (bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
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