I recently had the opportunity to run a Lean Startup workshop for the Kessler Program at the Cornell School of Engineering. It was my first time running a workshop on Lean methods, so it was a bit of an experiment for me and I thought I'd share my thoughts on what I learned.

First, in terms of preparing for the workshop, I revisited some of my favorite books on Lean (documented in an earlier blog post) and reflected on some of the talks I've attended by folks such as Eric Ries, Ash Maurya and Steven Blank. I picked out a few examples from the Lean experiments we're running at Singlebrook. Then I reached out to the Lean Startup Circle group and sought advice on planning the workshop. I got some great ideas from members of the group. One member, Anna Curran (entrepreneur and founder of Cookbook Create) even agreed to meet with me in NYC and review her past experiences with running similar workshops. It was wonderful to get such support from the Lean community and it was instrumental in making my workshop a success.

I only had about two hours for the workshop , but the advice I got from everyone was to make it as hands on as possible using a sample business idea that the students could use for real experiments. One way or another, I knew I had to make sure to introduce the students to the key concept: GOOTB (Get Out of the Building). With that in mind, I devoted only about half an hour at the beginning of the class to reviewing some important concepts such as: Basic Lean methodology and history, Build-Measure-Learn, Business Model Canvas, Minimum Viable Product, Real vs Vanity Metrics, and Assumptions/Hypotheses. This went smoothly, but the main thing I learned from this part of the workshop is that it would have been more engaging if I had brought these concepts to life with a few more compelling visuals and stories. When I did tell a few stories from Singlebrook's experiences with Lean, I saw the students immediately get more engaged.

After the lecture, I divided the class into three groups and gave them a sample business idea (a new untested idea from our product lab) with college students as the target market (so that they could do customer development work right during the class), complete with a mobile LaunchRock site for the business that they could use as an MVP, as needed during their experiments. I gave each of the three groups one area to focus on from the business model canvas: Customer, Problem, Solution. While they were in the classroom, I had them document some key assumptions in their area and craft a hypothesis that they could test that evening. The class sprung to action and began furiously discussing ideas in their groups.

After about twenty minutes of prepping their experiments, we were ready to GOOTB! We took a field trip to the atrium at the business school and the class descended on groups of students studying at the different tables. Several of them headed to other buildings to try to find as many "customers" to speak with as possible in the limited time they had available. This was uncomfortable at first for many of them, but everyone rose to the occasion.

One of the key pieces of advice that Anna gave me when preparing for the workshop was to make sure to allow time for the "Learn" phase of the Build-Measure-Learn loop at the end of the class, so that the students could explore what surprised them and what they learned from their experiments. So, I allowed about thirty minutes at the end of class for each of the groups to present their data and talk about what they discovered from the process. 

A couple of the hypotheses were invalidated, as I expected they would be, but we actually got pretty positive feedback overall on the sample business concept. There were even students who tried to sign up for the non-existent mailing list for the sample business! I was surprised by how much data the students were able to gather in such a short period of time. They managed to get a decent sample size for their experiments and were able to get meaningful feedback from each of the "customers" they spoke with, including some compelling insights about the potential market for this product and some great feature ideas.

I can't emphasize enough the power and importance of the GOOTB process. These students uncovered more useful insights about this potential business idea in two hours, than we ever could have if we'd worked on the idea for weeks in isolation.

So, how did it turn out? The workshop was a great success overall. The students were completely engaged in the activity and clearly had a deep understanding of and appreciation for several Lean Startup concepts by the end of the evening. Some students said that it turned their whole day upside down (in a positive way)! One student was so inspired by the class that he developed an MVP of a mobile idea he had and shared it with me after the class.

What would I do differently next time? I would include more stories and images to bring the Lean concepts to life at the beginning of the workshop. I would also allow a little more time for the GOOTB portion of the workshop, since the hands on learning was the most valuable part. The students also felt that it would be helpful to have some more "fail fast" experiences, so next time we might craft a few hypotheses that were more likely to be invalidated. The students also were interested in learning more about when to apply Lean Startup principles and when it might be appropriate to use a different approach.

Have any of you participated in or run a Lean Startup workshop recently? Feel free to add comments to the blog about your experiences!