Adapting the Lean Methodology to fit other cultures.

Mapping out a strategy at the Hightech Campus Eindhoven

There is a very thoughtful post over on the Lean Startup Blog which caught my eye. That's because I'm working with a team who are adapting the great practical learnings from Silicon Valley and applying them to building successful high-tech companies in Silicon Polder. 

I see that a discussion about the different business cultures is taking place on September 24th, although it is 3 am here in the Netherlands. Startup experts Kevin Dewalt, Takashi Tsutsumi and Justin Wilcox will meet for a webcast to compare notes. Not sure if I will be the sharpest at that time of the morning. So here are some thoughts up front. Let's start with that blogpost that inspired me: 

In her post today, Lisa Regan, a writer for The Lean Startup Conference notes: 

Entrepreneurs beyond Silicon Valley, including those working abroad, often have to retool Lean Startup methods to apply them in places with very different business cultures.  Kevin Dewalt—a speaker at this year's Lean Startup Conference—is an entrepreneur, investor and adviser who has served as an investor for a strategic U.S. government fund and as Entrepreneur-In-Residence for the National Science Foundation. Two years ago, he moved to Beijing, where he founded Lean Startup Meetup Beijing, as well as his current venture,SoHelpful.me, a platform for leveraging one-to-one relationships to build reputation and word of mouth. 

“Two years ago I moved to Beijing...... If you ask people in Asia about Lean Startup methods, they’ll often say, ‘I’m not sure that would work here,’ and in a sense they’re right–many of the familiar methods won’t work if applied unmodified. That’s why I recommend that people focus on ideas rather than tactics. Lean Startup ideas will work even in places as different from Silicon Valley as Asia–the specific tactics will need modifying, though. 

“Think, for example, about the way we talk about sales and customer development and the idea of ‘getting out of the building.’ In Silicon Valley, you can go to people and ask them what their problems are, and what solutions they would value, and they’ll be happy to answer you. People in Silicon Valley are accustomed to openly discussing change, and to talking about what’s wrong or needs fixing —it’s culturally accepted there and you get a lot of practice at it. In most of the world, that’s just not the case. If you walk into a manager’s office almost anywhere in Asia and say, ‘I want to talk to you about your problems,’ he’ll tell you that everything’s fine, that he has no problems. He’ll probably suspect that his boss sent you. Right away, by talking in terms of problems and change, you’ve lost that person; they’ll just shut down. 

“This is not to say that you can’t get out of the building in Asia, too. But you'll need to do the legwork to get introduced, and to become really known to people before you ask them for help or information". 

“Another resistance or challenge faced by people starting businesses in Asia comes from within the startup itself, around getting support from co-founders and investors. There’s often a practice in Asia of locking onto the first idea as ‘the idea.’ Impatient investors and team members give little support to a founder trying to do Customer Development to verify or modify that idea. They often look on this as a waste of time. And then, when customers are not buying the product, the blame will tend to focus inward — on the founder for perceived shortcomings in the product, rather than examining the question of whether the product itself is actually solving a problem. 

Many of the challenges Kevin describe resonate with Takashi Tsutsumi. Takashi has been a venture capitalist for fourteen years, investing in technology startups both in Japan and in the United States. Enthusiastic about the scientific approach for a startup, he personally translated both The Four Steps to The Epiphany and The Startup Owner's Manual into Japanese. On weekends, he evangelizes Customer Development and runs a Lean LaunchPad class nationwide in Japan. Takashi spoke to us specifically about what it’s like to try to bring Lean Startup methodologies to a business culture as conservative as Japan’s. He described two challenges, and two pieces of good news. [Ed note: Takashi emphasized to us that his ideas here are his own and not affiliated with any companies that he works for or is involved with.]

“Japan is known for its conservatism and the norm of lifetime employment, both of which result in a lack of entrepreneurship. The following are a few examples.

“Challenge #1:  Perfectionism and detail-oriented culture

“Japanese are known for their perfectionism and the Japanese culture is highly detail-oriented. This culture particularly contradicts with minimum viable products. Entrepreneurs worry that they will lose their trust and reputation with customers if their products compromise features, UI/UX, quality, etc. In addition, although entrepreneurs come up with good MVPs, they gradually add more features as customers say that A, B, and Z are missing, resulting in a ‘maximum’ viable product instead. Therefore, one of the keys for success to practicing Lean Startup methodology in Japan is to encourage entrepreneurs to be patient in minimizing their products. I sometimes refer the nice rule of thumb from Eric Ries, ‘Take what you think is right now and cut it in half and do that two more times and ship it back.’

“Challenge #2:  Pivot is failure?

“Pivoting is a key Lean Startup concept, but in Japan, pivot mostly means failure. The Japanese perfectionism affects this thinking in that people consider it right to complete a plan once it’s developed. First, this is true for entrepreneurs. They stick to the initial idea (i.e., the hypothesis) even if facts tell them it’s wrong. They just hate to admit being wrong, or they believe themselves too much to change their mind. Second, and more important, stakeholders, such as investors and management, think this, too. Even when entrepreneurs get used to the principle of Lean Startup, in which a pivot is not necessarily a failure but is progress, their stakeholders don’t share the sensibility.

“Good news #1: Perfectionism and detail-oriented culture

“Perfectionism and detail orientation inhibit adapting Lean Startup methodology in Japan, but they turn out to be strengths once people buy in. Once they buy in, entrepreneurs in Japan follow and execute Lean Startup exhaustively. 

“Good news #2: Customer Discovery nurtures entrepreneurship

“Customer Discovery is never easy in Japan. Ordinary people do not talk to strangers, knowing they hate unsolicited inquiry. However, the more customers an entrepreneur talks to, the more they learn. What surprises me, however, is that talking to customers also turns non-entrepreneurs to entrepreneurs because they feel a sense of fun and confidence in their idea. 

I hope these thoughts encourage you to explore the full post.

In my work with Startupbootcamp HightechXL, a hardware accelerator right in the heart of the High-Tech campus in Eindhoven. With Philips, ASML, NXP next door, and with 60 nationalities on site, it's one of the most inspiring ecosystems I have ever worked in. And it's expanding rapidly so 10,000 people will be on site within a couple of years, 2000 more than now.

Kevin and Takashi are spot on when they say you should adapt the ideas to fit the local culture. We've taken the lessons learned from Eric Ries and Steve Blank and adapted a few things. European VC's usually have a financial background rather than experience in running a start-up themselves. Explaining that a Business Model Canvas needs to come way before any thoughts of a plan are alien to many, especially those who worked in research units that then spun out into their own companies. Companies invented for you, making huge guesses behind high walled fences. 

Plenty of friendly faces at the recent Expat meet and greet in Eindhoven

We're seeing in the South of the Netherlands much less of the arrogance that you see in big cities. May be it is because they have to try harder to find and keep the international talent. But it is also because Philips and others were some of the first to adopt an open innovation approach based on trust and collaboration. 

Getting start-ups to present their idea in a clear, logical, interesting format is much harder in Europe than in the US. Sometimes it is the language barrier - you write a news story in French or Dutch in a different way to English. It is more like a zoom in rather than a zoom out. Which is why English VC's shout at many European startups to get to the point. 

The other challenge is the mainstream media. Science reporting has been seriously neglected by many European public service broadcasters. It is either event journalism with no substance, or foreign material (often excellent) reworked into a local language. That means that local ideas and developments never get the credit they deserve. The work that the Dutch have done with wifi, bluetooth, and chip design are known only to few. That may be because companies like ASML make the machines that make the chips, but there is never an ASML inside label on the outside. So startups in this part of the Europe may have world-class technology. But they have to work 3 times as hard to get the attention of the public as well as investors. Fortunately the better accelerators realise this challenge and help the start-ups build a media strategy as well as finding a context for the new product or service.

Can I also say thank you to the Lean Startup Conference and the eco-system around it for all the inspiration and guidance you have given through books (we bought the Kindle versions), podcasts and blogs. We understand that content is king and putting the ideas to work in a new context is probably King Kong. 

We're blogging about our adventures on these pages and we're always willing to share our experiences with those in this vibrant community.


Onward!

Shapeways - from Eindhoven to New York City

There's a great series of video interviews running on The Verge at the moment. It is called Small Empires. Hosted by Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, the series focuses on New York based startups.

Episode 5 caught my eye this week as it features a visit to Shapeways, the 3D printing success story which started in the South-East corner of the Netherlands. Founded by an ex-Philips employee, Peter Weijmarshausen, these guys combine very clever technology with a passion for cool design. And by building a shop rather like an art gallery, it inspires others to make things. My son used the 3D service they built in Eindhoven for a project earlier this year - their turnaround time was phenomenal and the costs were very reasonable. Quality of the final product was simply perfect.

Personally, I have no doubt that 3D printing is going to be big. I already know people who use Shapeways or companies like it to make spare parts on-demand to restore antique cars. Why keep a storehouse full of spares when you may need a part every few years? The video above also features co-founder and COO of Shapeways Marleen Vogelaar. It seems the reason that Shapeways has managed to raise more than 30 million dollars in funding is due to the strength of the community they have built around the factory in Long Island City, in Queens, New York. And they have some mighty cool offices on the 9th floor of the building at 419 Park Avenue South in Manhattan!

They help those people uploading designs, giving advice as to whether it will print well in 3D. And the fact that they have printing facilities on both sides of the Atlantic has reduced both shipping costs and the time customers need to wait for their designs to arrive. Shapeways is much more than a print shop dealing with 30,000 uploads to their website per month - in my experience they also give extremely useful advice. The goal is to build a factory with 50 3D printers. There may be a time when everyone has a 3D printer at home, but, as you can see in the video, there's a bit more work needed than just filling a stack of paper as with its 2D cousin. Crafting these objects still takes a few hours in 3D. 

Brabant - where it's happening in R & D

Rather pleased at the response as the video campaign to assist recruitment to the Startupbootcamp HightechXL program now takes shape. Thanks for those who tweeted and reposted. Great buzz in the city of Eindhoven these days. Hope they win their bid to be the Netherlands Cultural capital in 2018. The region certainly deserves more recognition - it's putting more than 3.3 billion Euro into R & D. The rest of the country pales by comparison.

HightechXL Ramps up to the next Phase

Summer holidays are over. 

The labs, cafes and testing facilities are buzzing again on the Hightech Campus Eindhoven. Our global search for brilliant teams now enters a new phase. We've launched the first in a new series of insider videos, giving you a taste of what's to come.

Startupbootcamp HightechXL is ramping up to be the world's leading accelerator for young high-tech companies. 10 teams will soon be selected for the program starting here in the heart of what's happening on November 11th. If your team fits one of the high-tech profiles we're looking for, - and if you're ready to advance your global business strategy, we really should be talking.

Bart Lugard - driving our global search for teams

Don't Miss the Open Pitch Days - Aug 29 & Sept 3rd

Bart Lugard is heading our global search for teams. He reports a very high interest in our different approach to startup acceleration. 

"Competition to get into the program in November is intense. On-line discussions are already taking place this month with teams who have already applied. But there is still a window of opportunity in the open pitch days we're arrange for August 29th and September 3rd 2013. We know that high potentials always surprise us. We love to be challenged by brilliance. And we believe we have useful guidance to give back. All the details are at Hightechxl.com. Spread the word!

8 Profiles on our radar

"Of course, in high-tech, we’re looking for strong teams that have more than just an idea. The winning teams will start the program on November 11^th with a proof of concept or technology proof of principle. Ideally, they should have a demonstrator or a working prototype. In general, paper plans are not usually enough."

"In the various conversations we have had with early startup companies, it's clear that there are big differences between the world of app development and those that involve hardware in their solution. As you're out there searching for the "sustainable business model", as Steve Blank would say, it's much easier to tweak a line of code rather than rebuild a piece of hardware. Which is why the HightechXL program has been fine tuned to the very specific needs of high-tech companies."

"We have had questions from companies who are specialising in software only. But in each case this software is somehow connected to a piece of dedicated hardware. Like a vehicle, or a specialised sensor, or a robot."

Together we'll build a world class business strategy

Bart shares some of the feedback that's been coming in during the first part of August. "We should stress that during the three months (Nov-Feb) we will not focus on developing your technology any further. Instead, we will use the time to fine tune the business model, validate the customer base, engage with lead customers, sign up pilot projects as well as prepare a world-class investor pitch for Demo Day in February. Others have described our program as building a real-world business strategy.

So why are we encouraging teams to apply early? 

It makes a lot of sense to sign up today because late comers often lose out! Not only do early applicants stand out from the rest, we want to reduce the last minute rush that other accelerators report. Our advice to teams is to apply early, even if they have not yet finalised everything (like getting a video pitch ready). 

Fill in what you can and consider applying for one of the on-line pitching sessions. That's a great chance to ask open questions to the program organisers and some of the lead mentors. They may come back with advice and suggestions that can improve the team's chances of getting selected. They still have time to tweak the application. 

Our team in Eindhoven is constantly watching the incoming applications and is already approaching teams for an initial conversation. Good luck - it is going to be a brilliant experience for everyone. 

Startup Materials in Eindhoven and Sweden

In our search for brilliant high-tech startups at HighTechXL, we're also looking for young teams working on new materials. And here are two examples.

Recently, the Public Library of Science reported results from a University team in Upsalla, Sweden in an article published on July 17th. But you really need to the read the article by Robin Burks in the magazine DVICE to understand the significance of what has been discovered.

Upsalite - Credit to PLOS-One

Upsalite has the highest surface area measured for an alkali earth metal carbonate: 800 square meters per gram. This puts the material in a very exclusive class of porous, high surface area materials that includes silica, zeolites, metal organic frameworks and carbon nanotubes. The research team also found that the material was filled with empty pores, which gives it a unique way of interacting with the environment. For example, Upsalite can absorb more water at low relative humidities than any other currently available material.

These unique properties could lead to Upsalite being useful in a variety of industrial applications, including the collection of toxic waste, chemicals and oil spills. It could also prove useful for drug delivery systems, odor control, and sanitation after a fire.

So basically, this is like Silica Gel on Steroids! 

And that reminds me of an article which recently resurfaced in the Los Angeles Times. 

Pollution Absorbing Pavements Reduce Smog

It is about a technique developed at the Eindhoven University of Technology and tested in a residential area of Hengelo. The original report was published three years ago when the TuE, working with a paving company, developed a new type of pavement which directly reduces air pollution. The technique involves spraying specially treated paving stones with a compound that includes Titanium Oxide. The brochure from the manufacturer says that measurements in Hengelo are showing the stones are absorbing large quantities of Nitrous Oxide, one of the pollutants emitted from car exhaust pipes. The findings, published in a recent edition of the Journal of Hazardous Materials, could provide a scenarios of how cities might be designed to gobble up air pollution from auto emissions. After taking measurements for a year, the scientists found that the street outfitted with smog-eating paving blocks, also called photocatalytic pavement, reduced nitrogen oxide air pollution by up to 45% in ideal weather conditions and 19% over the course of a day.

Nitrogen oxides -- also known as NOx -- are a group of poisonous gases produced by cars and power plants that react with other compounds in the atmosphere to form smog.

Modern Eindhoven 

While the air-cleaning potential of photocatalytic surfaces has been known for several years, the Institution of Chemical Engineers Chief Executive David Brown, “this latest research shows the potential of chemically engineered surfaces to further improve our quality of life, especially in major urban areas where traffic emissions are high.”

The specially treated paving stones in Hengelo are already visible on Google Street View

Vint Cerf - What high-tech startups need to be focussed on

The Guardian has just published a keynote discussion from their "Activate London Summit 2013". Its a conversation between Vint Cerf, vice president and chief Internet evangelist at Google and Jeff Jarvis, professor, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. After a brief introduction, Jeff steers the conversation in the direction of online privacy, the internet of things, Google Glass, and the future of libraries. I have met and talked with Vint at several conferences. He is such a wise man and very approachable. He promised to follow-up on a suggestion I gave at LIFT in Geneva, and within days he had done just that, bringing me into contact with exactly the organisations I was looking for. So I find his thoughts and visions on what could happen next to be more than relevant when the media is all buzzing about privacy, Edward Snowden and his NSA revelations, and whether we can trust the cloud. For some reason the Guardian Media Network has not released this video for embedding, so you have to watch it on the Guardian site. It is here. Well worth the 18 minutes.

Vint Cerf also offers his perspective on re-imagining the media and government. May be the interview will encourage you to rediscover what Vint has said elsewhere recently. I also include the LIFT conference video where I first came into contact with the great man. 

Note how he stimulates you to think about what still needs to be done. The companies in Silicon Valley are still very much focussed on social and communications (mainly tablets and phones). What excites me about other places in the world, like Eindhoven. is what they are doing with the Internet of Things. As Vint explains in the Guardian interview. Passive Products are becoming active services. And the high-tech startups are the people really moving the boundaries. That's why I have become involved with Startupbootcamp HightechXL. It is clearly where both science and finance are converging. 



Because VC's are always searching for scalable ideas, in the one-billion dollar range, those teams working with both hardware as well as software solutions has a distinct advantage. Yes, the initial risk is higher. But so are the rewards. 

Live Robots Playing Football - for a real purpose

I kid you not. For the next few days, Eindhoven, The Netherlands is home to over 2500 robotics enthusiasts as part of the international Robocup2013 competition. A huge effort has gone in to hosting this international tournament.

While to outsiders it may just look like a geek fest, the artificial intelligence technologies being developed by researchers are increasingly important. to society. Not only to do the jobs that are routine, but also to go into areas where no humans would dare to tread. Robots are already used in natural disasters, but they always need to be driven. To build effective robots that can operate and think for themselves will need another couple of decades. The Robocup organisers have set themselves a goal. To build a robot soccer team that beats a human team by the year 2050.

Live feeds from the event are here below and are active throughout the tournament (Eindhoven is on time zome UTC+2). It ends on June 30th.



The competition is split into various leagues, for example, how can robots be used in the home? Look at this video from a previous event.

Are you building a robotics company? Many of the contestants in Eindhoven are doing more that just playing games. This is a great opportunity to show the outside world just what artifical intelligence has achieved so far. 

High Tech Campus from the air.  We'te in the building by the lake....

Our brand new HightechXL accelerator is actively looking for teams that are interested in applying for a high-tech accelerator program we're organising in Eindhoven in November 2013. Robotics is one of the 8 fields of interest. Here are ten reasons to consider the High Tech Campus as a place to build your robotics company. 8000 next-door neighbours who are engineers, entrepreneurs and developers sounds like a pretty good reason to me.

Eindhoven University of Technology

The Countdown Has Begun

Getting the show on the road. Bart Lugard & Broos Bakens of the SBC HighTechXL Team

Yes, I've been up to something. I love it when a plan comes together. Some of you may know that I have a fascinating for science and technology. In the past that has involved several trips to Eindhoven in the South of the Netherlands, and what used to be called the NatLab. It was the R & D science park set up by Philips in 1998. And it used to have a high fence all around the one square kilometre. Journalists had to bring a passport and the procedures at the front gate reminded me of Checkpoint Charlie between East and West Berlin. All this was needed because Philips made a lot of money licensing its patents. They're slogan at the time was "Philips Invents For You".

The old days before Philips really saw the light....

Except that in 2003 they realised that closed innovation means you're not ready to compete in the digital age. It is now a time when the business model is not shouting but sharing. So the fence went away and Philips started a plan to sell off the real estate to make it clear that it was no longer the Philips Research Park.  Today the old research park is now the High Tech Campus. It's home to 100 companies, 8000 people from over 60 countries. And they're expanding because the ecosystem that is blossoming there is running out of space. Two new buildings are under construction, one connected with healthcare, the other with LED lighting.

Europe's answer to Silicon Valley.

Disruption is the key to Hardware Innovation

The large corporations on the site like ABB, ASML, Intel, Irdeto, NXP Semiconductors, NXP Software, Philips, Sentech, and SRB Energy, have realised the value of the positive, disruptive value of high-tech start-ups. 

Of course it's all about the network in the Internet of Things. The Great Cafe is where many deals are done

These are young companies of around 3-6 people who have come up with a brilliant business idea and have a working prototype. The High Tech campus is rapidly building a reputation where innovative start-ups & sme’s disrupt, innovate and get funded. Shapeways (3D printing), Sapiens Neuro (Neuroscience), Civolution (Media Content Fingerprinting), Genkey (Large Scale Biometrics), Intrinsic-ID (Sensitive Data Protection Across All Devices), are just some of the recent success stories. 

Infact I learned that a lot of the technology in my Samsung mobile uses chip technology developed on the High Tech Campus.

The inaugural mentor meeting at HTC Eindhoven

Assembling a different program line-up

I've been a mentor to a couple of accelerator programmes in Amsterdam. VC4Africa and Startupbootcamp Amsterdam. Now, I'm closely involved with building a very different kind of high-tech accelerator right in the heart of Europe’s equivalent of “Silicon Valley”. In fact, we’re convinced it has every chance of becoming the leading accelerator of its kind, because it is clearly focused on companies working in the most successful high-tech sectors.

We’ve secured a prime location on “the Strip”, which forms the centre of activities on what’s known as the “High Tech Campus”. It can justly claim to be the R & D capital of Western Europe with more than 1400 patents registered last year. It’s no wonder that the Eindhoven area leads in both brainpower and R & D investments (US$4.5 billion dollars in 2012). Large international corporations like are just a few minutes’ walk from our offices.

StartupBootCamp High Tech is driven by experienced entrepreneurs Guus Frericks & Eric van den Eijnden of Dutch Expansion Capital. Patrick Gabriëls is leading the team on behalf  of the Ernst & Young partnership.

And yesterday we launched the first mentor meeting to explain the plans and how mentors contribute to make the program possible - and much more effective than a couple of years at a business school. This bootcamp can draw on more than 500 world-class specialists and mentors in the 7 cities that form the Startupbootcamp international network. They have people covering a wide-range of relevant expertise. We’re also tapping into the mentor and investor networks of E & Y and Dutch Expansion Capital.

So we’ve now been given the green light and the challenge to to find the 10 best high-tech start-ups on the planet. They will benefit from a unique 6 month accelerator program starting in early November this year. But don't wait until then. If you know of teams that might qualify, now is the time to act. The sign-up address is simple HighTechXL.com

We believe that 70% of the teams in the program will come from outside the Netherlands.

In these times of polarising discussions about immigration, remember that Silicon Valley USA owes its success to the input of foreign nationals. 56% of companies there were started by international founders. It’s the same story here on the West Coast of Europe. At the same time we see very aggressive campaigns by cities and national governments in order to attract the best to their part of the world.

We’ve opened our application program to the world. But we’re starting an extensive active search to keep the standards at the top level. It's a safari in search of brilliance. And I must say - I love every minute of it.

The HighTechXL Long List

If you have an inside track to teams working in these disruptive technology areas, then don't hesitate to get in touch via LinkedIn

The areas where the Accelerator concentrates on.

Internet of Things	Machine to Machine communication. Networks of low-cost sensors and actuators used for data collection, monitoring, decision making and process optimisation. Includes intelligent lighting systems, personal entertainment, Micro Medical Systems & relevant Nanotechnology.
Advanced Materials	New materials designed to have superior characteristics, (e.g. strengths, conductivity, weight,) or extraordinary functionality. (like graphene)
(Near) Autonomous Vehicles	Vehicles that can navigate and operate with little or no human intervention. Developments in sustainable personal mobility (e.g. SolarTeamEindhoven)
Energy Storage	Devices or system that store energy for later use. Includes advanced battery technologies.
3D Printing	Additive manufacturing techniques to create objects by printing layers of material based on digital models. From spare parts for obsolete cars to high-grade medical human implants. This area is creating huge interest.
Renewable Energy	Generation of electricity from renewable sources, reducing the impact on climate. From solar cells to tidal power.
Advanced Robotics	Increasingly capable robots with enhanced
Lifetech – Medtech	21st century healthcare, including the “quantified self”. Technologies to improve personal wellbeing.