Lean Startup Method Hampers Breakthrough Innovations and Company's Innovativeness

Abstract

The Lean Startup Method (LSM) provides a systematic management of innovation processes within startups and even within well-established companies. Despite its wide use by a lot of innovative companies, this study claims that using the LSM compromises the development of breakthrough and radical innovations and also companies' innovativeness is hindered given that companies usually follow the method and its principles blindly, without fully understanding its advantages and disadvantages. The aim of this study is to make a critical analysis of the LSM with focus on the above two statements and to test the critical findings from the analysis with the help of innovation experts. The methods employed in the study are mainly statistical ones like Pearson correlation, linear regression and statistical mean. The results show that innovation experts generally do agree with the formulated critical points (CPs) in the research but still use the method because they had not been aware of these disadvantages before entering the research as respondents. Another finding is the negative correlation between commercializing breakthrough innovations and using customers in the innovation development process. The contribution of the paper for the readers is mainly related to the impact of customer utilization within the breakthrough innovation development process and how using the LSM might compromise companies' innovativeness in general.