Innovation Blocked by Company Culture, Corporates say

Lean Startup Summit Explores Innovation Challenges from 3.500 Visitors of 50 Innovation Meetups.

(See German Version in Newsroom)

Creating a culture of entrepreneurship in their company is the biggest innovation challenge corporates face, according to 20 percent of the corporate visitors of Lean Startup Nights. By comparison, only 5 percent of startup visitors stated this as a challenge. These are some of the findings Lean Startup Summit shared after exploring the challenges their attendees face and the goals they hope to achieve by joining Lean Startup Night meetups.

Preparing for the next Lean Startup Summit in Berlin (Feb. 11&12, 2019), the Lean Startup Summit EMEA team welcomed more than 3,500 visitors during 50 Lean Startup Nights in 2018. These are meetups across Europe designed to connect the innovation community and help them swap ideas with one another while learning the nuances of the methodology from Lean Startup Summit’s expert network. Each meetup provided the team with data concerning the work experience and innovation questions attendees have.

The main finding: corporates and big-size enterprises stand apart from smaller organizations. The former overwhelmingly came with an interest to learn how to build the modern company by implementing Lean Startup. Contrary to this, attendees from startups and scale-ups, well versed in the Lean Startup methodology, indicated that their main goal was to learn how to improve experiments and validate a hypothesis. Asked what their biggest challenge is related to the Lean Startup methodology, a Zalando employee attending in Berlin responded: “How to avoid [the innovation culture from] becoming a theater where everyone acts like they should by the book, but actually just goes by past knowledge, pre-made decisions and assumptions.”

Crowd of innovators at one of the 50 meetups researched - CAIRO - Aug 31 

In addition to learning how to bring innovation to their companies, attendees from large companies, particularly those who already had a high amount of innovation experience, joined Lean Startup Night meetups to network. On average, attendees from medium or large-sized enterprises with medium to high levels of innovation experience came to network three times more than those with lower levels of experience. Corporate attendees showed a common culture of entrepreneurship challenge, best summarized by a Bombardier Inc. project manager: “How can organizations remain nimble, flexible, responsive, innovative and entrepreneurial while growing?”

Scale-ups relate to this, with many finding it difficult to remain innovative through fast growth periods: 27 percent indicated that they find continuous experimentation challenging, and 55 percent of scale-ups joined to revisit the basics of Lean Startup. The attendees in more than 25 cities represented a wide range of company sizes (including freelancers, startups, scale-ups, medium-sized corporates and large-size enterprises) and provided data that gives a comprehensive qualitative indication of the challenges European innovators of all occupational demographics face. “These meetups are not only an excellent way to build community and connect our European ecosystem, but they also shed light on the needs of entrepreneurs across industries,” said Thijs Sprangers, director of Lean Startup Summit EMEA and founder of Live on Demand. “We are using these insights to choose topics and speakers for new events and to suggest valuable connections for innovation leaders.”

RESEARCH CONCLUSIONS:

1. Company Culture Blocks Corporates from Innovating

20% indicate the culture of entrepreneurship as main challenge, making it the second biggest challenge after methodical needs (compared to startups at 5%)

2. Scale Ups Main Challenge is Staying Lean during Fast Growth

27% of growing companies face challenges in continuous experimentation 55% of scale-ups need to revisit the basics of lean startups

3. Europe’s Innovation Newbies Get Out of the Building to Connect with Fellow Entrepreneurs

36% of low experienced innovators seek to learn lean startup basics through meetups

4. Experienced people at big companies are the most active networkers and worry less about the basics

This group joins the meetups more often (3x as much or 20% more) just to network. Only 10% mention challenges with the basics, significantly less than all other groups, where this number is usually around 30-40%. To learn more about the full research conclusions, please visit the Lean Startup Summit newsroom.

Credits for the research results go to Yannick Mijsters and Sarah Bovagnet and our great group of EMEA ambassadors!

Lean Startup Summit brings the big ideas from Eric Ries’s books off the page to show how organizations are making them real around the world. Alongside keynotes and case studies, their summits offer workshops and matchmaking sessions where attendees can have more immersive experiences, breaking off a chunk of the practice and working through it with seasoned experts. Lean Startup Summit Berlin, in partnership with Strategyzer, ESMT Berlin and WeWork, is co-presented by Lean Startup Co. and Live on Demand and attracts a diverse audience from countries across Europe and beyond.

For more information, please visit the Lean Startup Summit website.