Paris - USI 2012 Session

Whether your company’s a raw startup with three people in a basement or a Fortune 100 striving for disruptive innovation and growth, the Customer Development process is a proven, powerful accelerant to both, born a decade ago in Silicon Valley. Companies of all stripes use the process to involve customers and their feedback to rapidly iterate both the product and their business model, hopefully eating their established competitors’ for lunch in the process.  To date, many thousands of startups have put the process to the test, and that real-world testing has led to the brand-new Startup Owner’s Manual, by Steve Blank and speaker Bob Dorf.

Bob will offer a “tour” of the detailed step-by-step methodology for building scalable startups, whether they’re found in garages or within the walls of major corporations.  And he’ll explain how Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas provides a framework for conceiving the innovator’s business model, as well as a way to monitor Customer Development progress. The process itself, and the new book, bring a nearly scientific method to the typically chaotic, seemingly disorganized startup process.  

Startups and big companies alike follow totally different rules.  Startups first search for a repeatable, scalable, profitable business model as they “get out of the building” to elicit and respond to customer feedback.  Among many others embracing the process are 200 teams of innovators funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, not to mention hundreds if not thousands of startups worldwide.