In this Quartz post ‘“The Lean Startup” is an unproductive legend‘ the authors denounce the excessive ideological weight of the concept – both for startup founders, investors and educators.
According to them, “The Lean Startup ideology has sown a lot of confusion in cohort after cohort of my MIT students for a decade. The recipes have all the right sounding words and slogans. They seem to make so much sense, so how could they not work?“. And they quote a number of instances where this approach has not made sense, or where it has been used in situations where it was not applicable (such as the scaling up of a startup), or where people quoted the approach to justify inadequate actions.
I really believe that the Lean Startup approach is on something. The main message – that it is essential to listen to the customer the earliest possible (on the basis of a Minimum Viable Product) and not spend excessive resources to develop what we believe is the best product – is needed and important.
Of course like any approach it has a domain of application and can’t be applied to all circumstances in life. This is not a reason to throw it in the trash: like any approach, let’s use it within its domain of validity and let’s be wise enough to recognize when it is not applicable.
