lean startup, design thinking, and the mindset of the syllabus

Lean Startup, Design Thinking, and The Mindset of the Syllabus

Kyle Wild Founder, CEO of Keen IO

I was (ill-advisedly) invited to guest lecture at UC Berkeley, a school I’m fairly certain I could never gain admission to.

This talk was the best I could do on short notice.

My thanks (and apologies) to Alan van Pelt

@dorkitude [email protected], September 27, 13

mailto:[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

Who’s this guy?Grew up on the internet (AKA a nerd in a rural Bible Belt town)

Sold websites & ads as a kid

Moved to SF right after college (2007)(AKA home of the internet)

Quit Google almost immediately & was employee #1 (or engineer #1) at 3 startups

Started my own company, Keen IO, in January 2012I won’t bore you with the details of what we actually do, but tell all your friends we’re awesome anyway.

Friday, September 27, 13

Why is this guy talking at us?

The premise is that I have something to teach you about innovation.

The sub-premise is that innovation can be taught.

I’m pretty sure “sub-premise” isn’t a word.


I struggled to put this talk together.

1) I’m a terrible procrastinator. 11:41am in SF

2) I’m not sure I agree with the premise.


You’re college students.

There is a syllabus for success in college.

There are procedures to follow, boxes to check, and at the end, you can get an “A” if you do what’s asked

of you.

If you think linearly enough.


There is no syllabus for innovation.

You can only get an “A” in innovation if you think non-linearly enough.


That being said, there are many attempts at making a

syllabus for innovation.

1) Design Thinking

2) Lean Startup

Two of my favorites are:


Design ThinkingThe most complex slides I could find to embody the ideas behind:

I don’t know what these mean, but clearly the creators of these slides were smarter than me.

**Yes I know, it’s “smarter than I”.


Design Thinking is Awesome!

Here’s a better slide.

Anything that starts with “empathize” is awesome.


Design Thinking is Awesome!Here’s another one, with more flows!

I took this pic from a website whose H2 copy was, I shit you not, “Design Thinking has become an integral part of SAP's development philosophy.” Unironically!


Lean Startup is Awesome!Eric Ries followed my company on AngelList yesterday, which was the happiest fanboy moment of my life.

The only problem here is that empathy isn’t measurable.

If it were up to me, I would probably replace “measure” with “observe qualitatively and quantitatively”. And since this is my talk, it is up to me!


Lean Startup is Awesome!

Remind me to have our designer take a look at these slides before I share them with anyone outside of this room.

Observe qualitatively and quantitatively


Every step comprises a set of group tasks.

The only thing more complex & unique than a person is a group of people.

There is no perfect process for every group of people. I would argue there isn’t even a good one.

Where they both break down


Conclusion: Be skeptical of process.

3) Don’t map your organization to someone else’s process.

4) Instead, let your process emerge from your team’s identity, so the mapping is more perfect between process and group DNA.

1) Even the processes you invented yourselves are suspect.

2) Processes you got out of some book or some lecture are the most suspicious of all. No matter how handsome or funny the speaker was.

(There is no syllabus for innovation.)

Err on the side of too much chaos, not on the side of too much structure.


Questions?


lean startup, design thinking, and the mindset of the syllabus

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