Lean Startup Practices: Operationalizing the Technological Business Planning Process in an Academic Environment

Abstract

The generation of innovation in the academic environment involves the development of technology/product, technological transfer and business, which together make up the Technological Business Planning Process (TBPP). This process can be divided into three stages: world of technology (initial stage), world of transition from technology to product and business (intermediate stage), and world of business (final stage). In this context, there is the Lean Startup (LS) methodology, which comprises a set of potential practices to facilitate the operationalization of these stages of development. However, the existing literature is incipient and lacks guidance on the LS practices with the greatest potential to contribute to each of these stages, which constitutes a theoretical gap. Thus, this research aims to identify the LS practices most used by researchers-entrepreneurs in the different stages of the Technological Business Planning Process. The methodological approach used was the case study in an important Brazilian public university. In this context, nine innovation projects in the process of generating technological business were analyzed. The results show four main contributions: i) the practices contributed mainly to the intermediate phase of the TBPP; ii) BMC and MVP were considered the most important practices to operationalize TBPP; iii) the LS practices contributed significantly to the knowledge management between team projects; and iv) the combined implementation of the practices highlighted the benefits for TBPP. This study contributes to technology innovation management in the academic environment and provides some gaps that can be developed in future works in technological projects context.