It is impossible to operationalize a concept that cannot be defined

… and

“the concept is synonymous with the corresponding set of operations”

(Bridgman, 1927; Dewey, 1929)

… so …

❓What is enterpreneurship?

“The discovery and exploitation of profitable (business) opportunities”

(Shane and Venkataraman, 2000 – AMR)

“An Entrepreneurial Event involves the creation of a new organization to pursue an opportunity”

(Bygrave, 1989 – ET&P)

“The Entrepreneurial Process involves all the functions, activities, and actions associated with the perceiving of opportunities and the creation of organizations to pursue them.”

(Bygrave and Hofer, 1991 – ET&P)

“An Entrepreneur is someone who perceives an opportunity and creates an organization to pursue it.”

(Bygrave and Hofer, 1991 – ET&P)

-> CHAR:

• TEMPORARY ORGANIZATION: opportunities comes and go fast. You have to take them fast!
• IN SEARCH: startups are always in search. In particulary they search for innovation.
• BUSINESS MODEL: they have to create a working BM and…
• SCALABLE AND REPLICABLE: Once found thay have to be able to scale them.

-> New terms:

Invention: is something new.

Innovation: invention commercialized

Opportunity: recognition that in the world there is something new or the reorganization of resources to create smth new.

Capturing the Opportunity: create an organizatoin around the opportunity.

-> There are two way to do it…

New Ventures & Startups:

New Venture:

-> DEF:

a commercial undertaking characterized by risk of loss as well as opportunity for profit; and the merchandise, money, or other property placed at risk in such an undertaking

(Collins English Dictionary)

a new activity, usually in business, that involves risk or uncertainty

(British Dictionary)

-> CHAR:

• Know how compete, to scale, grow.

Startup:

-> DEF:

A business or undertaking that has recently begun operation

(American Heritage Dictionary)

“A startup is a company working to solve a problem where the solution is not obvious and success is not guaranteed”

(Neil Blumenthal, cofounder and coCEO – Warby Parker)

“Startup is a state of mind. It’s when people join your company and are still making the explicit decision to forgo stability in exchange for the promise of tremendous growth and the excitement of making immediate impact”

(Adora Cheung, cofounder and CEO – Homejoy)

-> A possible list of common traits for a startup (Forbes, 2014):

• no acquisition by a larger company yet: that’s called TRADE SALE;
• far from IPO (Initial Public Offering) ar the so called EXI Tbecause you become a brand or you have to follow some regulations;
• founders who haven’t personally sold shares yet;
• high ability to achieve unconstrained grow.

⚠ After are bullshit:

• up to 3-5 years old: not really true, usually after 2 years they’re lend;

-> Some of them requires longer incubation time.

• a single office;
• revenues lower than 20 mln $;
• less than 80 employees and less than 5 people in the Board;

-> Accourding to Steve Blank (article weriter) when you find a BM you become a SCALEUP, you re not anymore a startup!

-> Priority of a Startup si to rise money. It’s a metter  of Equity vs Debt to build the capital.

❓Which is better to chose as first raising money? Debt or Equity?

-> At first just Equity invest in you, not banks or others.

• Equity can not ask money if you fail (instead of banks), it’s not suppose to do that;
• Equity can help not only with money.
• Real investor give money but don’t want the control of it!
• Just three F invest at the beginning… Friends, Family and… Fools

Actions and Opportunities:

STRATEGIC ACTIONS: Those actions through which companies develop and exploit current competitive advantages while supporting entrepreneurial actions that discover and exploit opportunities that will help create competitive advantages for the firm in the future.             (Porter, 2001; Kuratko et al., 2001)

• Entrepreneurial and strategic actions are complementary, not interchangeable;

STRATEGIC ENTREPRENEURSHIP: integration of entrepreneurial (i.e. opportunity seeking actions) and strategic (i.e. advantage-seeking actions) perspectives to design and implement entrepreneurial strategies that create wealth.                                                                                                       (Hitt et al., 2001)

• Is an entrepreneurial action that is taken with a strategic perspective. “Romeo (entrepreneur) on the balcony (strategy)” (Venkataraman and Sarasvathy, 2001);

ENTREPRENEURIAL ACTIONS: Actions through which companies identify and then seek to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities rivals have not noticed or fully exploited.                    (Ireland et al., 2001)

• Is designed to identify and pursue entrepreneurial opportunities which arise from dynamic and uncertain environments;
• Using a strategic perspective is useful to identify the most appropriate opportunities to exploit and then facilitate the exploitation to establish (hopefully sustainable) competitive advantages;

ENTREPRENEURIAL OPPORTUNITIES: External environment conditions suggesting the viability of introducing and selling new value propositions (products, services, raw materials and organizing methods) at prices exceeding their production costs.                                (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000)

• They surface when actors have insights about the value of resources or a combination of resources that are unknown to others                                                        (Alvarez and Barney, 2001)

INTEGRATING ENTREPRENEURSHIP: and strategic actions is necessary for firm to create maximum wealth;

The model by Ireland ed al. 2003

-> CHAR ENTREPRENEURSIAL VENTURES:

• SMALL, entrepreneurial ventures are effective in identifying opportunities but are less successful in developing competitive advantages needed to appropriate value from those opportunities.
• LARGE, established firms often are relatively more effective in establishing competitive advantages but are less able to identify new opportunities.
• Is unique, distinctive construct through which firms are able to create wealth, and is made of the following dimensions:
  1. Entrepreneurial mindset, culture and leadership;
  2. The strategic management of resources;
  3. Applying creativity to develop innovations;

Entrepreneurial Mindset:

-> DEF: way of thinking about a business that focuses on/ captures the benefits of uncertainty.

• Growth-oriented perspective through which individuals promote flexibility, creativity, continuous innovation, and renewal.
• Identify and exploit new opportunities because they have cognitive abilities that allow them to impart meaning to ambiguous and fragmented situations.

-> CHAR:

1. Recognizing entrepreneurial opportunities;
2. Entrepreneurial alertness (“flashes of superior insight”), ability to identify when new goods or services become feasible or when existing goods or services become unexpectedly valuable to consumers;

1. Real options logic;
2. Entrepreneurial framework, which includes actions such as setting goals, establishing an opportunity register (i.e. where firms record entrepreneurial opportunities), and determining the timing associated with launching the strategy required to exploit an entrepreneurial opportunity.

Entrepreneurial Culture:

-> DEF: system of shared values (i.e. what is important) and beliefs (i.e. how things work) that shape the firm’s structural arrangements and itss members’ actions to produce behavioral norms (i.e. the way work is completed in the organization).

-> CHAR:

Multiple expectations; Facilitates firms’ efforts to manage resources strategically; New ideas & creativity are expected; Risk taking is encouraged; Failure is tolerated;

Learning is promoted; Product/Process/ Administrative innovations are championed; Continuous change is viewed as a conveyor of opportunities. Leaders are responsible for developing & nurturing an entrepreneurial culture.

Entrepreneurial Leadership:

-> DEF: ability to influence others to manage resources strategically in order to emphasize both opportunity-seeking and advantage-deeking behaviors:

-> CHAR:

1. Nourish an entrepreneurial capability.

-> Human capital is the source of SE behaviors.

-> A vision emphasizing the importance of SE as well as a commitment to develop human capital facilitates individuals’ efforts to develop entrepreneurial capabilities such as agility, creativity, and skills to manage resources strategically;

1. Protect innovations threatening the current business model:

-> Individuals sometimes see disruptive innovation as threatening—to them personally as well as to their organizations.

-> Entrepreneurial leaders openly share information with organizational members to describe disruptive innovations’ potential benefits (e.g., stimulating development of new competitive advantages).

1. Make sense of opportunities:

-> The probability that individuals will accept the need to pursue entrepreneurial opportunities and to develop unique competitive advantages needed to exploit them increases when those opportunities are a part of the firm’s opportunity register.

-> Entrepreneurial leaders are able to communicate the value of opportunities and how exploiting them contributes to the firm’s overall goals as well as to individuals’ goals.

1. Question the dominant logic:

-> Dominant logic describes how leaders conceptualize their business and evaluate resource allocation decisions.

-> Key assumptions about industries and markets that influence the firm’s opportunity– and advantage seeking behaviors- should be periodically questioned to ascertain their validity (i.e., challenging the dominant logic).

-> Entrepreneurial leaders evaluate the assumptions underlying the dominant logic to make certain that the firm is successfully positioned to identify value-creating entrepreneurial opportunities.

1. Revisit the “deceptively simple questions”:

-> Entrepreneurial leaders examine questions about the viability of the markets in which the firm competes, the company’s purpose, how success is defined and the firm’s relationships with different stakeholders.

• Influence what the firm identifies as opportunities and how it manages its resources to exploit those opportunities.

1. Link entrepreneurship and strategic management:

-> Effective entrepreneurial leaders believe that to create the most value, firms must be “strategically entrepreneurial”.

-> This desired end state is achieved when leaders’ entrepreneurial mindsets help them develop a culture in which resources are managed strategically (i.e., advantage-seeking behavior), yet entrepreneurially (i.e., opportunity-seeking behavior).

Managing Resources Strategycally:

-> Idiosyncratic resources are likely to produce sustainable competitive advantages only when they are managed strategically;

-> DEF: Resources are managed strategically when their deployment facilitates the simultaneous and integrated use of opportunity- and advantage-seeking behaviors.

• It affects the value to be derived from the intangible/ tangible assets that organizations use to develop & implement strategies;
• The creation, maintenance, and sustainability of techniques for accumulating and deploying resources may become a focal point of research.

-> EXAMPLE: When firms structure a resource portfolio, bundle resources to form capabilities and leverage those capabilities flowing from their financial, human and social capital (resources) to simultaneously enact opportunity- and advantage-seeking behaviors and create wealth, they are managing their resources strategically.

-> Resources to be managed strategically are:

1. Financial Capital (tangible);
2. Human Capital (intangible);
3. Social Capital (intangible):
   • Set of relationships between individuals – internal social capital – and between individuals and organizations – external social capital – that facilitate actions.
   • Collectively, social capital is the total set of value-creating resources that accrues to the firm because of its durable network of intra– and inter-firm relationships.
   • Resulting from relationships inside the firm and with external entities, social capital helps the firm to gain access to and control of resources and to absorb knowledge.

-> Stages to manage resources strategically:

1. Structuring the resource portfolio: Acquiring, accumulating and divesting resources
2. Bundling resources:
   1. Bundling tangible and intangible resources to organize them in an original way that contributes to recognizing and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities, to create competitive advantage.
   2. Bundled resources give rise to capabilities
   3. Usually these capabilities are needed to select and implement the firm’s strategies. The unique capabilities created help companies differentiate themselves from competitors.
3. Leveraging capabilities: Choosing how the capabilities will be leveraged within and across SBUs and organizational functions.

Applying Creativity and Developing Innovation:

-> Creativity and innovation result when resources are managed strategically.

INNOVATION: force of “creative destruction” (Schumpeter);

• New combination of production factors are the essence eof innovation.

-> Firms must be creative to develop innovation.

-> Creativity stems from “bisociation”

• BISOCIATION: when a person combines two or more previously unrelated matrices of skills or information;
• Takes place when individuals combine information to identify a opportunity or to help shape competitive advantages.
• Bisociation leads to the recognition of entrepreneurial opportunities often after periods of mental incubation.

Kind of Investors:

-> CATHEGORY 0 the FFF: Friends, Family and Fools, the non professional expertise.

-> CATHEGORY 1: the informal investors, are professional investors and know how evaluate your idea professionaly, but don’t necessary run a business plan:

• Shark Tank,
• Private Investors,
• Business Angels,
• Start up,
• Studios,
• Ventury Incubators: those incubators that invest in equity sturtups,
• Crowd Founding:
  • Debt CF: gave money and have the indication that I will have it back;
  • Equity CF: gave money with promise to become shareholders;
  • Reward CF: anticipate the money to product a product and when it’s done, I have it.

-> Es: Hydrogen One, from RED Digital Camera.

-> They don’t run a Due Diligence & Perform informal assessment through models like 3Ts

-> CATHEGORY 2: Formal Investors: run a due diligence and assess a startup’s business plan.

Financing Round Stages:

1. Seed: Financing provided to research, assess and develop an initial concept before a business has reached the start-up phase.
2. Start-up or early-stage venture: Financing for product development and initial marketing. Companies have not sold their product commercially and are in the process of being set up.
3. Later-stage venture: Financing for the expansion of an operating company. Later-stage venture tends to finance companies already backed by venture capital firms.
4. Growth: A type of private equity investment – most often a minority investment – in relatively mature companies that are looking for capital to expand into new markets or restructure operations.
5. Buyout: Financing to acquire a company. It may use a significant amount of borrowed money to meet the cost of acquisition.
6. Rescue/Turnaround: Financing made available to an existing business in difficulty, with a view to re-establishing prosperity.
7. Replacement capital: The purchase of a minority stake of existing shares in a company from another private equity firm or from another shareholder or shareholders.

Terminology:

Business Angels.

-> DEF: individual investors, usually with business experience, who provide capital for start-up firms.

• Important sources of equity for small firms with growth potential in their early stages of development, long before they become attractive for venture capital funds.

Venture Capital:

-> DEF: branch of private equity that is investing in stablish companies.

• They don’t care to have higher shares;
• They invest in it, make it perform and after they sell it.

-> We can split them in three parts:

• IVCs, INDIPENDENT VENTURE CAPITAL FUNDS:

-> DEF: VC indipendent from other companies. They invest without obtaining any return.

• CVCs, CORPORATE VENTURE CAPITAL FUNDS:

-> DEF: branches of existing companies that invest money in startups to create strategic sinergies between the mother company and the sturtup.

• E.g. google funds
• GVCs, GOVERNMENT

-> DEF: Institutional funds that invest in market failures areas (areas in which is difficult rise money from ICVs or CVCs).

-> Finanziaria Regionale.

The 3Ts:

• TEAM: startup is a team made from etherogeneus component in order to generate value.
• TECHNOLOGIES: investors love technologies because allow to invest fast.
• TRACTION: ability to paly ground and have some momentum of growth in the market.

-> Prove it with LSAs, LEAN STARTUP APPROACHES: experimental approaches in order to prove your investors that your startup is working good.

📌Look the following chapter.

• Making experiment in the market in order to achieve something that can prove that you are growing.

-> Even if the # of customer are small, they are increasing.

-> Are informal because none ask to prove, but are better to not have a business plan.

Startups & Strategy Formulation Process:

-> Entrepreneurs and “startuppers” are mostly focused on pragmatic problems, like operationalizing their business idea, promoting it and receiving funding…

• They often believe that sketching a business modelis enough to get their startup up and running and to endow it with some sort of “strategic direction” (Ghezzi, 2014 – SD)
• However, they also need to formulate an overall business strategy to set objectives, assess the external/internal context and implement their business model in a way that catalyzes the startup’s innovation potential towards the achievement of an original competitive advantage
• Failing to get this would likely jeopardize the chances of success and very survival of their endeavor

-> Nonetheless, the strategy formulation process for a startup significantly differs from the traditional process undertaken by large or consolidated companies

• Focus on strategic innovation (with a “bootstrapping” approach)

-> Startups have to monitorate the every-day activity to have a 3 years perspective.

STEP 1: OBJECTIVES AND CONSTRAINTS DEFINITION:

• STEP 1.1: Economic Sub-objectives, KPIs, Time Milestones
• STEP 1.2: Industry Foresight and Strategic Intent

STEP 2: SWOT ANALYSIS:

• STEP 2.1: External Analysis
• STEP 2.1.1: 5 Competitive Forces + PEST
• STEP 2.1.2: Big Bang Disruption
• STEP 2.1.3: Blue Ocean Strategy (6 Paths Framework)
• STEP 2.2: Internal Analysis
• STEP 2.2.1: Core resources and competencies

STEP 3: STRATEGIC ALTERNATIVES GENERATION, ASSESSMENT AND SELECTION:

• STEP 3.1: Business Model Design
• STEP 3.2: Competitive Advantage

STEP 4: LEAN STARTUP APPROACH.

-> In the external Analysis we have to evaluate the casuality of Big Distruption & opportunity of BOS.

Lean Startups Approaches:

-> DEF: experimental approaches to validate the business model.

Agenda:

1. Fallacy of the «perfect business plan»;
2. Models for startup development;
3. Focus on Lean Startup Approaches;
4. Key principles of the Lean method;
5. Theoretical Roots and Empirical Findings.

A.Fallacy of the «perfect business plan»

-> Business Plans rarely survive first contact with customers;

-> Start-ups are not smaller version of large companies.

B.Models for Startups Development:

-> Main models for start-ups development are:

1. Product development;
2. Waterfall development;
3. Agile development;
4. Customer development;
5. Lean Startup.

1.PRODUCT development:

-> DEF: methodology for new products development.

• Focused on 4 phases:

> This method was good till ’50:

 “Too many startups begin with an idea for a product that they think people want. They then spend months, sometimes years, perfecting that product without ever showing the product, even in a very  rudimentary form, to the prospective customer. When they fail to reach broad uptake from customers, it is often because they never spoke to prospective customers and determined whether or not the product was interesting” (Ries, 2012).

2.WATERFALL development:

-> DEF: each phase must be completed fully before the next phase can being.

• End of each phase a review takes place to determine project healthy.
• Phases don’t overlap.
• Invented in ’70, also called Stage-Gate model.

3.AGILE development:

-> DEF: software development methods based on iterative and incremental development.

-> CHAR:

• Promotes adaptive planning;
• Promotes evolutionary development & deliery;
• Time boxed iterative approach;
• Encourages rapid & flexible response to change;

4.CUSTOMER Development:

-> FOCUS: customers;

-> It’s devided in 4 phases;

-> The first product is not designed to satisfy mainstream customers but to be tested on a small group of visionary customers (evangelists).

EVANGELIST: are customers that could have a problem.

PROS	CONS
Iterative Efficient & Effective Improved learning Time saving Avoiding early scaling	Specific on business areas Eary evangelist aredifficult to be found Evangelist are easily influenced by others or by the company’s view Vicious circle («bugs» detection never ends)

5.LEAN STARTUP:

-> DEF:  approach for launching businesses and products, that relies on validated learning, scientific experimentation, and iterative product releases to shorten product development cycles, measure progress, and gain valuable customer feedback. In this way, companies, especially startups, can design their products or services to meet the demands of their customer base without requiring large amounts of initial funding or expensive product launches.

• We know that technology exist;
• We have to understand if the customer want that;
• The customers are the worse enemy for entrepeneuer: the entrepeneuer is scared by customer rejection.

“ Lean Startup isn’t about being cheap [but is about] being less wasteful and still doing things that are big.”

“Startup success can be engineered by following the process, which means it can be learned , which means it can be taught . The Lean Startup method teaches you how to drive a startup-how to steer, when to turn, and when to persevere-and grow a business with maximum acceleration .”

-> IDEA > Lean Organization: we want to cut waste, everything that is non value creating for the customers.

• Everytime we do something the custumers are not asking for. We should know what the customers would like.

Build-Measure-Learn Loop:

How do you build the fastest ship? You try to build and test your hypothesis; you measure the result; and then you learn new knowledge that you can bring to your next ship design.

 Process Flow Lean Startup:

-> Model designed by Eisenman, 2012

C.Focus on Lean Startup:

Key Principles:

1. ELIMINATE UNCERTSAINTY: Using the Lean Startup approach, companies can create order not chaos by providing tools to test a vision continuously;
2. WORK SMARTER NOT HARDER: By the time that product is ready to be distributed widely, it will already have established customers;

3.  DEVELOP A MVP: A core component of Lean Startup methodology is the build-measure-learn feedback loop. The first step is figuring out the problem that needs to be solved and then developing a minimum viable product (MVP or prototipe) to begin the process of learning as quickly as possible
4. VALIDATED LEARNING: Progress in manufacturing is measured by the production of high quality goods. The unit of progress for Lean Startups is validated learning – a rigorous method for demonstrating progress when one is embedded in the soil of extreme uncertainty.

1.Falsifiable Hypothesis:

-> Lean Startup will approach these assumptions with two thing in mind:

1. Make these assumption testable & tangible, no abstract;
2. Know which of your assumptions are the most uncertain, and test these risky assumptions first.

2.Minimum Viable Product:

-> AIM: being the process of learning, not end it.

• Test fundamental business hypotheses.
  • Is designed not just to answer product design or technical questions.
• Contrary to traditional product development, which usually involves a long, thoughtful incubation period and strives for product perfection.

Dropbox case:

-> Founding Team: made up of engineers;

-> Investors: would explain that the market was crowded of existing products.

-> Challenge: is impossible to demnstrarte the working software in a prototype form.

-> In parallel the founders wanted feedback from customers about what their product development efforts. In particularly D. needed to test its leap-of-faith question: if we can provide a superior customer experience, will people give our product a try?.

-> When they uploaded a demonstration video on Hacker news on April 2007 it droves hundreds of thousands people to the website.

=> Using Lean Startup principles, in just 15 months, Dropbox went from 100.000 to 4.000.000.

Takeaway:

• Biggest risk: making something no one wants;
• Not launching -> Painful, but not learning -> Fatal;

• Put something in users hand (doesn’t have to be code) and get real feedback ASAP;
• Know where your target audience hangs out & speak to them in an authentic way.

3.Validated Learning:

4.Pivoting:

PIVOT (Basketball): to keep one foot in place while holding the ball and moving the other foot one step in any direction.

-> Famous Pivot:

• Youtube: YouTube began life as a video dating site
• Instagram : it was a location based social network
• Groupon : formerly, “The Point”, site for online collective action and fundraising of collective actions (social media platform designed to get groups of people together to solve problems)
• Flickr: From a “massively multiplayer online role playing game” called Game Neverending  to the larger potential of simplifying photo sharing on the web.

Lean Analytics: Airbnb case:

Step1: FIGURE OUT WHAT METRIC TO IMPROVE

-> OBJ: improve the number of nights that a property was rented.

📌Is more central to their business than simply measuring revenue: Airbnb does well if its homeowners do well, and for it to succeed, it needs listed properties to be rented often so the homeowners will stick around.

-> The company knew that to succeed, they needed improvement in rental rates per property:

• One Metric That Matters: “Number of nights rented.”;
• KPI: Property bookings;
• Target: (not publicly known);
• Current level: (not publicly known);

STEP 2: FORM A HYPOTHESIS:

-> HP: Properties with better pictures rent more often.

• Noticed that the pictures of those properties looked, to them, more professional.
• Maybe they realized that one common complaint from renters was that the property didn’t actually look like the pictures on the site.
• Maybe they found that people would most often abandon a listing right after seeing photographs.
• Maybe they analyzed the metadata from pictures and found that there was a strong correlation between properties that rent

STEP 3: CREATE THE EXPERIMENT

• Who is the campaign for? Travelers looking at listings on Airbnb.
• What do you want them to do? Decide to rent a property more frequently.
• Why do they do it? Because the photographs look professional and make the property look beautiful

-> Find out if travelers will book more properties because of professionally photographed listings enough to improve the property bookings by X%.

-> Airbnb’s experiment consisted of something that looked like a real feature, but under the covers was really just humans and contracted photographers. During the experiment they took pictures of properties, and then measured the KPI, comparing properties that had been photographed to those that hadn’t.

STEP 4: MEASURE PERFORMANCE

-> Airbnb measured the bookings from the few properties that had professional photos and

compared the rate of bookings with properties that only had photos taken by property owners

=> The properties with professional photography had 2-3 times the number of bookings! By 2011, the company had 20 full – time photographers on staff.

D.Key Principles of Lean Method:

-> Method developed by Steve Blank, 2013, HBR

1.Instead of writing an intricate business plan, summarize their hypotheses in a framework called Business Model Canvas

2.Use a «get out of the building» approach called Customer Development

-> Method composed by two parts:

• SEARCH: Looking for a business model that works

-> ❌Feedbaks are negative = wrong hypotheses;

-> ✔️Feedbacks are positive = proven model;

• EXECUTION: Building a formal organization;

1.CUSTOMER DISCOVERY	2.CUSTOMER VALIDATION
-> Company ideas are translated into: BM Hypothesis Test assumptions on customer needs Creation of a MVP	-> Iterative process: Test all hypotheses Validate customers’ interest through early usage / orders Pivot ( change in hypotheses )
3.CUSTOMER CREATION	4.COMPANY BUILDING
-> The product is refined: Demand building Marketing & sales spending S caling up the business	-> Business transition from startup mode: Customer development team Functional department

 

3.Practice Agile Development:

-> «In contrast to traditional product development in which each stage occurs in linear order and lasts for months , agile development builds product in short, repeated cycles.

-> A start -up produces a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – containing only critical features – gathers feedback on it from customers , and then starts over with a revised MVP»

E.Theoretical Roots & Empirical Findings:

-> MODEL: theoretical roots, Ghezzi, 2018;

-> Opportunity:

• Can be discovered;
• Can be created;

-> Entrepeneures make the best they can with the resources they have.

ISSUE	PRACTICAL GUIDELINES
Type of Digital Startup	-> All startups, including the CVC-backed, benefit from adopting & impelmenting LSAs.
Stage of Startup Development	-> Startups are to adopt LSAs in their early stages of development, while continuously implementing them following Agile principles whenever the context turns out to be uncertain.
Bad Choices Concerning the Provision of LSA-related  knowledge	-> Startups are to carefully assess and select suppliers for LSAs courses and training sessions. -> Startups are to rely on certified and experienced actors – e.g. universities, colleges and research institutions, top-ranked incubators and accelerators.
Formulation of falsifiable hypotheses	-> Entrepreneurs must think carefully on how they can accurately formulate falsifiable hypotheses about their startup’s business model (a step they often neglect). -> Falsifiable hypotheses constitute the operational trigger for the scientific methods embedded in LSAs.
Identification of earlyvangelists	-> Entrepreneurs are to properly evaluate who their earlyvangelists and trial users are and where they “hang out”, in order to target the right prospects and receive informed feedback. -> In B2B settings, evangelists are found among existing business customers by carefully assessing the customers’ purchasing processes and identifying the key decision-makers.
MVP design	-> MVPs are artefacts with these key characteristics: they Resemble and embody the business idea; Are actionable; Are measurable through the MVP testing outcomes; and Are less wasteful than prototypes. -> MVPs as paid-for products increase the amount of information they carry when tested upon. -> MVP design can leverage Feature Development Design (FDD) to provide guidelines on how to identify and design minimum features and run iterations. -> In B2B settings, an MVP cannot be too “minimum”, as it should incorporate a sufficient number of features at a satisfactory level to compete with existing offers.
Experimenting and testing	-> Experiments are to be MVP-based, which in turn means they are BM-based. -> Digital products and services can be run through Scrum sprint cycles, to control for time and budget. -> Entrepreneurs are to radically rethink their views on IP protection, embracing openness and collaboration through fast experimenting and learning.
Business Model validation and pivoting	-> Startups are to experiment and test on all elements of their business models, not just their value proposition (product, service, solution, bundle). -> Executing a go-to-market strategy often requires more testing than the value proposition itself.
LSA broad adoption and implementation process	-> Entrepreneurs (…) are to adopt LSAs comprehensively, rather than cherry-picking the steps and elements they perceive as most useful. -> … are to go beyond heuristics and apply a scientific method by means of the LSAs. -> … are to integrate LSAs with business planning, thus altering Blank’s motto to: “before writing a business plan, design a business model and apply LSAs”. -> … are not to overlook the process of strategy formulation and strategy analysis which can inform the formulation of falsifiable hypotheses and design of a preliminary business model.

💡Before to make a BM run a StartUp

📌Ghezzi, 2018

Bringing LSAs & Business Planning, Ghezzi 2018