(2023-07-25) Steve Blank Lean Meets Wicked Problems

Steve Blank: Lean Meets Wicked Problems. I just spent a month and a half at Imperial College London co-teaching a “Wicked” Entrepreneurship class. (A few of these projects address climate change, but are they big levers? ((2020-06-27) Ways To Nudge Future))

In contrast, designing AI-driven enterprise software or building dating apps are comparatively simple problems.

I’ve known Professor Cristobal Garcia since 2010 when he hosted my first visit to Catholic University in Santiago of Chile and to southern Patagonia. Now at Imperial College Business School and Co-Founder of the Wicked Acceleration Labs, Cristobal and I wondered if we could combine the tenets of Lean (get out of the building, build MVPs, run experiments, move with speed and urgency) with the expanded toolset developed by researchers who work on Wicked problems and Systems’ Thinking.

Our goal was to see if we could get students to stop admiring problems and work rapidly on solving them.

This five-week class was going to be our MVP.

Finding The Problems

Professor Garcia scoured the world to find eight Wicked/complex problems for students to work on. (see bottom of page)

With the problems in hand, we set about recruiting students from both Imperial College’s business school and the Royal College of Art’s design and engineering programs.

We held an info session explaining the problems and the unique parts of the class

they were going to get out of the building and observe the problems first-hand. And instead of passively observing them, they were going to build and test MVPs. All in six weeks.

The pedagogy of the class (our teaching methods and the learning activities) were similar to all the Lean/I-Corps and Hacking for Defense classes we’ve previously taught

the students, rather than being presented with all of the essential information, must discover that information rapidly for themselves.

The teams were going to get out of the building and talk to 10 stakeholder a week. Then weekly each team will present 1) here’s what we thought, 2) here’s what we did, 3) here’s what we learned, 4) here’s what we’re going to do during this week.

The key difference between this class and previous Lean/I-Corps and Hacking for Defense classes was that Wicked problems required more than just a business model or mission model to grasp the problem and map the solution

students needed a suite of tools – Stakeholder Maps, Systems Maps, Assumptions Mapping, Experimentation Menus, Unintended Consequences Map, and finally Dr. Garcia’s derivative of the Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Canvas – the Wicked Canvas – which added the concept of unintended consequences and the “sub-problems” according to the different stakeholders’ perspectives to the traditional canvas

Class Flow

The Wicked Swiss Army Knife for the week: Mapping Assumptions Matrix

The Wicked Swiss Army Knife for the week: from problem to solution via “How Might We…” Builder and further initial solution experimentation; On Canvases: What, Why and How; The Wicked Canvas

Wicked Business Models – validating all building blocks

The Wicked Swiss Tool- maps for acupuncture in the territory (aka Acupuncture Map for Regional System Intervention); Storytelling & Pitching

Results: To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect. We pushed the students way past what they have done in other classes.

The team working on the Mapuche conflict in the Araucania region of Chile, flew to Chile from London, interviewed multiple stakeholders and were back in time for next week’s class.

Lessons Learned

I think we’ll teach it again.

Team final presentations: The team’s final lessons learned presentations were pretty extraordinary, only matched by their post-class comments. Take a look below.

Problems:

Increasing security and prosperity amid the Mapuche conflict in Araucania region of Chile

Enabling and accelerating a Green Hydrogen economy - deck

Turning the Basque Country in Spain into an AI hub

Solving Disinformation/Information Pollution for the BBC - deck

Creating Blue Carbon (Biosequestration) projects for the UK Ministry of Defense

Improving patient outcomes for Ukrainian battlefield injuries

Imagining the future of a low-earth-orbit (LEO) space economy

Creating a modular architecture for future UK defense ships