Steve Blank: ‘Lean’ Meets ‘Wicked’ Problems

Steve Blank at UC-Berkeley Haas. File photo

THE RESULTS

To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect. We pushed the students way past what they have done in other classes. In spite of what we said in the info session and syllabus, many students were in shock when they realized that they couldn’t take the class by just showing up, and heard in no uncertain terms that no stakeholder/customer interviews in week 1 was unacceptable.

Yet, everyone got the message pretty quickly. The team working on the Mapuche conflict in the Araucania region of Chile, flew to Chile from London, interviewed multiple stakeholders and were back in time for next week’s class. The team working to turn the Basque Country in Spain into an AI hub did the same — they flew to Bilbao and interviewed several stakeholders. The team working on the Green Hydrogen got connected to the Rotterdam ecosystem and key stakeholders in the Port, energy incumbents, VCs and Tech Universities.

The team working on Ukraine did not fly there for obvious reasons. The rest of the teams spread out across the UK — all of them furiously mapping stakeholders, assumptions, systems, etc., while proposing minimal viable solutions.

By the end of the class it was a whirlwind of activity as students not only presented their progress but saw that of their peers. No one wanted to be left behind. They all moved with speed and alacrity.

LESSONS LEARNED

Our conclusion? While this class is not a substitute for a years-long deep analysis of wicked/complex problems, it gave students a practical, hands-on introduction to tools to map, sense, understand and potentially solve wicked problems

It also gave them the confidence and tools to stop admiring problems and work on solving them.

I think we’ll teach it again.

TEAM FINAL PRESENTATIONS

The team’s final lessons learned presentations were pretty extraordinary, only matched by their post-class comments. Take a look below.

Team Wicked Araucania

Team Accelerate Basque

Team Green Hydrogen

Team Into The Blue

Team Information Pollution

Team Ukraine

Team Wicked Space

Team Future Proof the Navy


Entrepreneur-turned-educator Steve Blank is an adjunct professor at Stanford and co-founder of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement and the curriculums for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps and Hacking for Defense and Diplomacy, he’s changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate. Read his blog here.

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