Ultimate Lean, The Design Sprint Process.

5-StepsSprint

Your editor just came across a powerful lean startup tool developed by Google Ventures (GV) which gets entrepreneurs to a quick outcome.  Using an intense five days of focus (above) the  hypotheses can reach “go” or “no go” in one week.  Working together in a “sprint”, a team can shortcut the debate cycle and compress months of time into a single week.  One can fast-forward into the future to see your finished product and customer reactions, before making any expensive commitments.  It is true compressed lean startup, and inside of a larger course on entrepreneurship has its clear purpose.   Here’s a 4-minute video about the concept:

I am enthusiastic about the process, and see it making students and entrepreneurs more successful by getting to customer development quicker.  Fail fast, fail often.

Understand – The sprint starts by expanding our understanding of this space by learning the design philosophy of this new form factor. This philosophy provides the foundation upon which participants will build their ideas and prototypes.

Decide – This phase is when critical thinking reenters the picture. Coming up with a bunch of
amazing ideas is only useful if you actually take the next step to build them.
Validate – In this design sprint we validate through show and tell. This allows the group to further
learn different ways to design for this new form factor while also hearing from each other on their
own designs.
Diverge – The diverge phase is the sensational time when anything is possible. Participants
should explore all possible solutions to their user’s problem by putting aside critical thinking and
generating a large quantity of ideas to sort through later.
Prototype – Rapid prototyping allows you to test out your ideas without investing a ton of time,
money, or resources.
Here are more resources:
 https://library.gv.com/the-gv-research-sprint-a-4-day-process-for-answering-important-startup-questions-97279b532b25#.or11aecbg