Steve Blank: ‘Lean’ Meets ‘Wicked’ Problems

Steve Blank

THE CLASS

The pedagogy of the class (our teaching methods and the learning activities) were similar to all the Lean/I-Corps and Hacking for Defense classes we’ve previously taught. This meant the class was team-based, Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering), and experiential — where the students, rather than being presented with all of the essential information, must discover that information rapidly for themselves.

The teams were going to get out of the building and talk to 10 stakeholders a week. Then weekly, each team would present 1) Here’s what we thought, 2) Here’s what we did, 3) Here’s what we learned, and 4) Here’s what we’re going to do during this week.

The key difference between this class and previous Lean/I-Corps and Hacking for Defense classes was that wicked problems require more than just a business model or mission model to grasp the problem and map the solution. Here, to get a handle on the complexity of their problem, the students needed a suite of tools —  Stakeholder Maps, Systems Maps, Assumptions Mapping, Experimentation Menus, Unintended Consequences Maps, and finally Dr. Garcia’s derivative of Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas — the Wicked Canvas, which added the concept of unintended consequences and “sub-problems” according to the different stakeholders’ perspectives to the traditional canvas.

During the class, the teaching team offered explanations of each tool, but the teams got a firmer grasp on Wicked tools from a guest lecture by Professor Terry Irwin, director of the Transition Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon University (see her presentation here). Throughout the class teams had the flexibility to select the tools they felt appropriate to rapidly gain a holistic understanding and yet to develop a minimum viable product to address and experiment with each of the wicked problems.

CLASS FLOW

Week 1:

  • What is a simple idea? What are big ideas and Impact Hypotheses?
    • Characteristics of each. Rewards, CEO, team, complexity, end point, etc.
  • What is unique about Wicked Problems?
    • Beyond TAM and SAM (“back of the napkin”) for Wicked Problems
  • You need Big Ideas to tackle Wicked Problems: but who does it?
    •  Startups vs. Large Companies vs. Governments
    • Innovation at Speed for Horizon 1, 2 and 3 (Managing the Portfolio across Horizons)
  • What is Systems Thinking?
  • How to map stakeholders and systems’ dynamics?
  • Customer & Stakeholder Discovery: getting outside the building, city and country: why and how?

Mapping the Problem(s), Stakeholders and Systems –  Wicked Tools

Week 2:

  • Teams present for 6 min and receive 4 mins feedback
  • The Wicked Swiss Army Knife for the week: Mapping Assumptions Matrix, unintended consequences and how to run and design experiments
  • Prof Erkko Autio (ICBS and Wicked Labs) on AI Ecosystems and Prof Peter Palensky (TU Delft) on Smart Grids, Decarbornization and Green Hydrogen
  • Lecture on Minimal Viable Products (MVPs) and Experiments
  • Homework: getting outside the building & the country to run experiments

Assumption Mapping and Experimentation Type –  Wicked Tools

Week 3:

  • Teams present in 6 min and receive 4 mins feedback
  • The Wicked Swiss Army Knife for the week: from problem to solution via “How Might We…” Builder and further initial solution experimentation
  • On Canvases: What, Why and How
  • The Wicked Canvas
  • Next Steps and Homework: continue running experiments with MVPs and start validating your business/mission/wicked canvas

The Wicked Canvas –  Wicked Tools

Week 4:

  • Teams present in 6 min and receive 5 mins feedback
  • Wicked Business Models – validating all building blocks
  • The Geography of Innovation – the milieu, creative cities & prosperous regions
  • How World War II and the UK Started Silicon Valley
  • The Wicked Swiss Tool-  maps for acupuncture in the territory
  • Storytelling & Pitching
  • Homework: Validated MVP & Lessons learned

 

Experimentation Design and How We Might… –  Wicked Tools

Week 5:

  • Teams presented their Final Lessons Learned journey – Validated MVP, Insights & Hindsight (see the presentations at the end of the post.)
    • What did we understand about the problem on day 1?
    • What do we now understand?
    • How did we get here?
    • What solutions would we propose now?
    • What did we learn?
    • Reflections on the Wicked Tools

 

 

Acupuncture Map for Regional System Intervention  – Wicked Tools


See the next page for the class’ conclusions.