Lean Startup in Large Enterprises Using Human-Centered Design Thinking: A New Approach for Developing Transformational and Disruptive Innovations

Large companies are innovative along the sustaining trajectory, but fail in the development of transformational and disruptive innovation. Two of the reasons for this failure are that transformational and disruptive innovations require a new business model and lack a unifying development process comparable to stage gate. The lean startup process represents a new paradigm which allows companies to dramatically shorten the time needed to 1) create transformational and disruptive innovation: 2) pivot to a new business model or 3) stop the project. However, most of the published examples are from small start-ups. Large companies, based on implementation experiences from over 30 large companies, typically make the following mistakes: 1) incorrect problem definition; 2) confuse solution attributes and the solution; 3) use the business model canvas; 4) focus on the wrong customers; and 5) fail to embrace early prototyping. Best practices to avoid these implementation mistakes will be discussed in this paper.