This Guide introduces resources to help you learn the Lean Startup Principles. As you dive into this methodology, please be aware of the articles from Harvard Business Review that discussed the limitations of the Lean Startup Principles.

The courses selected can be audited for free and you can find the audit instructions for Coursera and Edx courses.

How to Build a Startup: The Lean LaunchPad (Audacity)

In an introduction to the basics of the famous Customer Development Process, Steve Blank provides insight into the key steps needed to build a successful startup.

Entrepreneurship 2: Launching your Start-Up (Wharton Online)

Provides practical, real-world knowledge about the lean approach, the minimum viable product, when to pivot, when to quit your day job, the art of the pitch, building and managing a team, allocating equity, and building your external team, advisory board members, professional services, and entrepreneurial strategy. At the end of this course, you’ll be able to create a strategy for launch, including knowing who you need to hire, how to manage them to provide the greatest value, and what legal aspects are involved.

Lean Startup Principles for the Social Sector (Acumen Academy)

Learn how to run experiments, pivot and remain lean and innovative while ethically serving customers and prioritizing social impact; use the value proposition canvas to map out your customers’ pains, gains, and jobs to be done; create and test hypotheses to refine the value proposition of your social enterprise or initiative.

Lean Startup Training (The George Washington University, Office of Innovation & Entrepreneurship)

In the past decade, a new approach to building startup ventures has emerged - the Lean Startup Method. This approach is an alternative to traditional, new-product development methods and has proven to be an effective way to turn a great idea into a successful venture.

Learn about Lean Startup (Open Classrooms)

In this course, you will learn how to state your assumptions as hypotheses, design experiments to validate those hypotheses, and apply the build-measure-learn steps of the Lean Cycle to generate data that you can analyze. It will explore cohort analysis, A/B testing, feature audits, and 'pirate' metrics and Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) in this course.

Evangelizing for the Lean Startup (Stanford University, 2009)

Speaker, author, and entrepreneur Eric Ries shares rapid fire wisdom on building nimble, responsive, and efficient online software-based businesses. He also offers his wisdom on streamlining processes and progressing engineering systems, and puts forth front line insight into why some new ideas succeed where others have failed.

Design Thinking vs. The Lean Startup (Stanford University, 2015)

This webinar shares insights and perspectives every innovator and entrepreneur should consider when organizing teams to create breakthrough products and services. Bill Burnett, consulting assistant professor and master in design thinking at Stanford University, takes you through the basic ideas of both methodologies and a comparison of their differences and limitations.

Research Insight: New Data on Lean Startup (Stanford University, 2021)

Featured speakers include Steve Blank and Riitta Katila, Stanford University and Michael Leatherbee, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.

You can search Harvard Business Review to learn more articles on this topic. You can also check if your university library has a subscription to the Business Source Complete database, which provides full-text access to Harvard Business Review articles, or use the library’s interlibrary loan service to access the article.

The Lean Startup Principles (theleanstartup.com)

What Is the Lean Startup Methodology? (universitylabpartners.org)

Harvard Business Review Lean business model topic, featured articles include:

• Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything

• The Limits of the Lean Startup Method

• What the Lean Startup Method Gets Right and Wrong

• Lean Strategy

A lean canvas is a 1-page business model template invented by Ash Maurya, the author of Running Lean: How to Iterate from Plan A to a Plan that Works.

• Lean Canvas (Conceptboard)

• Lean Canvas Template (Miro)

Click the link to find a Worldcat book record; enter a zipcode to check which library nearby has the book you can borrow. When the record is not available, a link to Amazon is provided.

• Blank, Steven G. The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win. Pescadero, 2013. Print.

• Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. New York: Crown Business, 2011. Print.

• Ries, Eric. The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth. 2017. Print.

• Maurya, Ash. Running Lean: Iterate from Plan a to a Plan That Works. Beijing: O'Reilly, 2018. Print.

• Maurya, Ash. Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth. , 2016. Print.

Read More Books on This Topic

• Steve Blank is a serial entrepreneur, and creator of the customer development method that launched the lean startup movement.

• Eric Ries, is a best-selling author, entrepreneur, and business visionary, applying lean business principles to the reinvention of Wall Street. He created the “lean startup” methodology.

SCORE mentors offer business strategy-related consultation via video, email, phone, or in-person.

• Develop New Products with Lean, Agile, and Design Thinking

• Understand Consumers and Find Product-Market Fit