Overview
The Lean LaunchPad is a course created by Steve Blank at Stanford in January 2011 that combined three building blocks into a single experiential curriculum: Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas (BMC), Blank's Customer Development methodology, and agile engineering practices. The launch of the course in January 2011 was a pivotal moment for entrepreneurship education.
How It Works
Unlike traditional entrepreneurship courses that culminate in a business plan, the Lean LaunchPad requires students to: 1. Use the Business Model Canvas to articulate their initial business model hypotheses 2. Get out of the classroom each week to test those hypotheses through direct customer contact 3. Report back with evidence — what they learned, what hypotheses were validated or invalidated 4. Iterate the canvas based on evidence 5. Present a final "lessons learned" rather than a polished business plan
Students typically conduct 10-15 customer interviews per week over the course of the semester, accumulating hundreds of data points about their proposed business model.
Adoption
The Lean LaunchPad curriculum was adopted by:
Significance
The Lean LaunchPad represents the culmination of Blank's intellectual project: transforming entrepreneurship education from planning (write a business plan) to doing (test hypotheses with real customers). It is the vehicle through which Customer Development became an institutional methodology rather than a practitioner's handbook.
Sources: steveblank.com, VentureWell, Wikipedia