Lean Startup, Agile Methodologies and Customer Development for business model innovation

Abstract

Purpose Startups have attracted increased attention over the past years. While entrepreneurs develop startups to capture new business opportunities, also large companies are turning to these fast-growing organizations in efforts to become more agile. However, managing business model innovation and validation is challenging. A number of methodologies, like the Lean Startup (LS), emerged to reduce uncertainties concerning innovation-based projects, and to contribute to business model validation. Despite its popularity, the literature on the LS and its key underpinnings (Agile Methodologies and Customer Development) is sparse, lacking an integrated and structured analysis of their impacts and potentialities. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a comprehensive systematic literature review on the topic fully analyzing a final set of 71 papers. Findings There is a turning point in the research stream’s maturity with publications in conferences and major journals, with the predominance of empirical investigations in the European region. Articles on the topic are on the rise in several technology fields. However, the literature on the subject falls short on providing guidance to assist practitioners and scholars on the adoption and investigation of these methodologies. Practical implications The paper provides guidance for practice by presenting a staircase roadmap for the LS implementation drawing from the final set of papers reviewed. Originality/value The study categorizes the current literature through a concept map, and offers a structured research agenda beyond the categories from the thematic analysis.

How Entrepreneurs make sense of Lean Startup Approaches: Business Models as cognitive lenses to generate fast and frugal Heuristics

“…A recent review from Bortolini and colleagues (2018) found that LSAs are rooted in the Learning School in Strategy -a finding shared by Contigiani and Levinthal (2019); at the same time, LSAs represent a pragmatic embodiment of an the entrepreneurial effectuation and bricolage logic (Sarasvathy, 2001;Fisher, 2012;Baker and Nelson, 2005;Frederiksen and Brem, 2017;Silva et al, 2019).…”

“…More in detail, LSAs were conceived to support the entrepreneurial activity of experimenting and testing the startup's value architecture, intended as the composition of its value creation, value delivery and value capture logics (Teece, 2010;Foss and Saebi, 2018): in sum, LSAs support the process of a startup's business model (BM) validation (Bortolini et al, 2018;Silva et al, 2019). LSAs emerge from realizing that startups are ultimately a temporary business model looking for validation through market experimentation or "customer discovery" (Blank, 2007), whereas experiments are meant to understand whether the BM is suitable for scaling, or should instead be modified, pivoted or even dropped altogether according to the results of the experiments and customer feedback.…”

Characterizing and Distinguishing ‘Innovative Start-ups’ Among Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME)

“…All ISs aim to have scalable, repeatable, profitable and viable business models. (Hanchi & Kerzazi, 2020;Silva et al, 2020) 1. The business scale is mainly small, considering certain grounded criteria such as the number of employees, annual turnover, owners' equity, etc.…”

“…A review of literature on specific aspects of Start-ups, such as Innovation (Spender et al, 2017), Start-up ecosystem (Ojaghi et al, 2019), Lean Start-up methodologies (Silva et al, 2020), growth of Start-ups (Pugliese et al, 2016), and Dynamic Capacities of Start-ups (Hanchi & Kerzazi, 2020), has provided us with a comprehensive view on Start-ups. Interestingly, all these LR papers have addressed these Start-ups by different names (see Table 1).…”

Business Models for Management and Entrepreneurs as a Tool for Survival and Success

“…Although substantial research has been conducted on the topic of business models and business model innovation in recent years (Silva, et al, 2019;Rachinger, et al, 2019;Reinhold, et al, 2019;Ovans, 2015;Foss and Saebi, 2018;Wirtz, et al, 2016; Baden-Fuller and Mangematin, 2013; Shafer, et al, 2005), there appears to be very little practical or hands-on understanding, knowledge or application of business models and the role they play in the successful management of SMEs. This emerged from research conducted in ten (10) Business models generally provide management with a snapshot of the organization's key functions, networks, channels (related to communication, promotion, and distribution), resources, and revenue generating mechanisms.…”