Lean Startup

GE's adaptation of the Lean Startup program, called FastWorks, has been well documented thus far. But what are the specifics of the ongoing journey of the FastWorks mindset and methodology, as it makes its way through the organization in an effort to drive innovation and shift GE’s culture? How is GE building and scaling FastWorks across the company? How has GE measured its success to-date, and what does the future of FastWorks look like? In a conversation with Lean Startup Co. co-founder Heather McGough, GE’s FastWorks Skills Director, Sinéad Clarkin, will discuss GE’s learning journey with FastWorks. Sinéad will take us through the pain points, skill requirements, and roadmap for this landmark program.

Starting a new business is hard enough, but creating a new technology has unique challenges. From how to deploy early funding, to hiring from a community that you trust, Laurence Kemball-Cook, founder and CEO of Pavegen, gives his insights into how applying Lean Startup principles helped his company become the global leader in harvesting energy and data from footfall.

The NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications is undergoing a major shift, using new technologies and unconventional approaches to better serve City partners and the millions of New Yorkers who depend on them. This presentation will shed light on the ways that an enormous government organization is working to become more agile, responsive, and contemporary to better get the job done. Following the presentation, NY1’s Josh Robin will conduct an on-stage interview with Dominic to learn more about these challenges and successes.

The NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications is undergoing a major shift, using new technologies and unconventional approaches to better serve City partners and the millions of New Yorkers who depend on them. This presentation will shed light on the ways that an enormous government organization is working to become more agile, responsive, and contemporary to better get the job done. Following the presentation, NY1’s Josh Robin will conduct an on-stage interview with Dominic to learn more about these challenges and successes.

UNICEF's Venture Fund is the first financial vehicle of its kind in the United Nations—allowing for $50-100K investments in open source technology companies in the countries where UNICEF works. Chris Fabian will discuss the importance of new approaches to solving the world's most pressing problems, and how creating prototypes and provocations to industry has helped situate UNICEF as a leader in identifying, financing, and scaling solutions that have never before been realized. More on the award-winning UNICEF Office of Innovation here: www.unicefstories.org and www.unicefinnovationfund.org.

Founded in 2005, Etsy has grown into a public company with over 1,000 employees. It's no longer a startup (in the traditional definition), but in many ways, Etsy still thinks and builds like one. This presentation will walk through examples of how Etsy takes Lean Startup approaches to smaller, startup-like products within the company, including how these smaller teams are formed, how their work is tested, and how they exist within the larger company ecosystem to allow for constant iteration and innovation by the brand. Included here will be tips for supporting internal startups within established companies.

How many startups does it take to launch a unicorn? 100? 1,000? How many internal startup teams do you need to replace your growth engine? Breakthrough innovation is the result of collaboration among a diverse group of people, all working in a different way. Organizations can’t just leave it up to a couple of hand-chosen innovation teams. In this talk, Brant Cooper will take you through a framework you can use to make entrepreneurial action the norm throughout your organization. It’s a bold initiative to launch 100 startups in 100 days. Brant will go through each of the impact levers to show you how you can roll out a similar initiative within your own organization, one that lays the groundwork for innovation transformation (even if you don’t actually get to 100 in 100 days!)

When, where, and how does Lean innovation work best in not-very-lean Fortune 1000 companies? Why is Lean Startup so powerful in some situations, and a waste of time and resources in many others? Bob Dorf will explore the challenges Lean innovators face in oft-stodgy, bloated big corporations that can’t and won’t take the do-or-die risks so common among Lean startups. He’ll discuss the “lean 4x4:” four key challenges when putting Lean to work in a large-scale enterprise, and four pillars of Lean innovation success.

Nordstrom is in the process of modernizing its digital properties—web/mobile web/in-store digital/app—as well as redefining the design and processes across the UX organization. When Jyoti Shukla began supporting the UX team, she noticed a number of large scale, heavy processes in place that did not necessarily yield a direct return on investment, nor did they delight and excite the customer. Jyoti focused on leading the team to develop a lean approach in delivering software to exceed the expectations of Nordstrom customers. Although there are always big challenges with process change, there is a lot of excitement to move the needle using newer/leaner methods. Jyoti will discuss some of the peaks and valleys of the experience she has had at Nordstrom in using lean concepts to drive the UX organization.

The Innovation Stack: Five OD Practices to Unleash the Creative Potential of Lean Enterprise Teams Eventually, every successful business struggles to produce their next killer product or service. A strong business model might work miracles for decades, but it too will stumble in the face of perpetual shifts in technology and culture. Innovation paralysis in enterprise is no mystery – rather, it’s the direct consequence of how we’ve designed large organizations and their teams. During this talk, Mark Raheja will share classic (and, at times funny) examples of the five most common inhibitors to Lean Enterprise innovation, and introduce The Innovation Stack – a holistic set of five practices designed to jumpstart the innovative capacity of any team implementing Lean Startup.

Large companies employ a variety of methods to develop new products, services, and processes that are critical to their future. We typically refer to these as “innovation,” but what we really mean is growth. Continuous and sustainable growth requires repeatable, scalable business models that create long-term competitive advantages. Every large company has a track record for innovation, that’s how they became large in the first place. “Innovation Capital” is the combination of a company’s talent, ideas, and culture, leveraged by their institutional knowledge, and fused with a capacity for rapid data acquisition. When combined with a system of real-time innovation metrics, innovation portfolio management is informed by data, maximizing returns and market position. Launchpad Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Jim Hornthal will discuss the components of Innovation Capital, how to find and share your company's existing assets, and how to create a culture and process that maximizes use of Innovation Capital.

How do you make the culture change from traditional to Lean work? It requires changing behaviors and building new habits and competencies. In this breakout session, Cindy Alvarez will share strategies that Microsoft's Cloud & Enterprise division has employed to help its 8,000+ employees learn new skills, build new habits, and change behaviors. You'll learn the pros and cons of various approaches, what initial investments they required, and which situations they've worked best in. If your leadership is looking to you to recommend a Lean strategy, this session will help you make a recommendation that works best for your organization.

In this participatory, fishbowl-style panel, Lean Design experts discuss how Lean systems allow teams to more quickly iterate upon and scale their ideas. Panelists Courtney Hemphill (Carbon Five), Ken Skistimas (GE Digital), and Amy Neuman (Autodesk) will cover the process, infrastructure, and team configurations inherent to Lean Design. Expect solid takeaways on how to incorporate these practices into your organization, and the chance to ask questions of our panelists. Moderated by Amee Mungo (GoKart Labs).

Bionic CEO David Kidder sits down with Carey Kolaja, the Global Chief Product Officer of Citi Fintech, to discuss how this juggernaut of bank is changing the way it works and building disruptive fintech solutions like a startup. Kidder and Kolaja will delve into not just what Citi Fintech is focused on but how they built a program for growth that combines the Lean Startup methodology with growth boards, which manage the investment and support of new ideas so they aren't prematurely killed or (equally problematic) prematurely scaled.

Groups of attendees crowd the stage after every conference we host, hoping to get a minute with Eric to ask his advice. To help get as many of the questions plaguing your business or organization answered by Eric as possible, we’re hosting a “Office Hours with Eric Ries” in New York. For this 30-minute session moderated by Jason Ashlock, Eric will be available via Skype to answer your questions about applying Lean Startup with your teams. You’ll learn not only how to resolve your internal issues, but also hear more about the challenges your peers in related industries are struggling with too. You’ll be asking your questions via the simple audience interaction app Slido, making for easy upvoting when those really pressing queries roll in.

Partner Webcast: How Enterprise Companies Can Use Product Analytics to Move Fast When: Thursday, August 17 at 9am PT/noon ET Featuring: Justin Bauer, VP of Product at Amplitude Product leaders at enterprise companies face a variety of challenges to moving fast. They come up against issues such as a lack of urgency to learn, decision making formed by opinions instead of metrics, and a lack of accountability to and ownership of metrics. In the current “age of the customer,” making decisions and iterating quickly is critical to staying competitive. Justin Bauer, VP of Product at Amplitude, will discuss how leading product organizations are using product analytics to spur innovation and increase decision velocity. By decentralizing decision-making and using metrics to ensure alignment and accountability across large teams, enterprise companies can use product analytics to empower those closest to customers’ problems. Justin will be interviewed by David Binetti, a Senior Faculty member with Lean Startup Co. Co

In this webcast Jim Cook, the current CFO of Mozilla, discusses his influential experiences running many of the early Netflix experiments. There were challenges every day, and data collection was rigorous. He is interviewed by Lean Startup Co. Corporate Education Program faculty member, Hugh Molotsi. www.leanstartup.co.

Groups of attendees crowd the stage after every conference we host, hoping to get a minute with Eric to ask his advice. To help get as many of the questions plaguing your business or organization answered by Eric as possible, we hosted a “Live Q&A with Eric Ries” in London. For this 30-minute session, moderated by Dave Cunningham, Eric answered your questions via Skype about applying Lean Startup with your teams. He discussed not only how to resolve your internal issues, but also the challenges your peers in related industries are struggling with too.

For many established organizations, the problems are clear: disruption from more nimble startups, waterfall processes that waste time and resources, and a culture that rewards playing by inflexible rules over running customer-driven experiments. The solutions are less obvious. How do organizations launch and scale internal startups? How do you systemize intrapreneurship? How should you change the way you hold employees accountable to encourage continuous innovation? Our Lean Enterprise experts Tendayi Viki and Janet Bumpas have actionable solutions to these questions and many others haunting Lean Enterprise practitioners. In this webcast, which will be moderated by six-time entrepreneur David Binetti, Tendayi and Janet will share case studies and actionable takeaways and answer your burning questions.

In transforming the way they work, GE knew it was time to rethink the performance process. Old performance management systems don’t work in a fast-changing market. The old way restricts them and doesn’t allow for the innovation critical for companies to remain relevant today. Join us in learning how to redefine and rebuild your company’s culture during an interview with Marilyn Gorman, Senior Faculty for Lean Startup Co.’s Education Program, and Janice Semper the Culture Leader for General Electric.The Lean Startup approach goes beyond building products and can be a toolkit used for the entire company, fundamentally changing the way we work and think. Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF