Are you leaner than the government?

Who knew Uncle Sam was a modern entrepreneur at heart? In light of the Presidential Election today, we would like to bring back to mind that even an American institution as well-established as the federal government is lining up with the lean-startup movement.

The trend started back when President Barack Obama took office in 2008 and immediately challenged federal agencies to streamline services and improve customer experiences. As the president’s initiative widened, it began to parallel many of the principles Silicon Valley business guru Eric Ries had outlined in his 2011 book, “The Lean Startup.” Even before the book’s publication, he’d been encouraging entrepreneurs to fast-track prototypes to get real-time market feedback, then modify on the fly.

So when the feds agreed to start up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in 2010, the White House’s then-Chief Technology Officer, Aneesh Chopra, gave Ries a call, according to a Public CIO article.

“I was surprised at first to hear of the interest,” Ries says in the article. “Yet here was the federal government talking about using some of these ideas, and they were quite serious about getting some value out of them.”

Ries hadn’t thought of governments using his approach, but as he and Chopra began applying lean-startup principles to the new bureau, the value of his ideas took hold.

The Public CIO article goes on to detail Chopra and Ries’ role in getting the bureau on its feet, and how Ries’ philosophy helped the federal healthcare.gov website get up and running in just 90 days — blazing fast, by federal timeframes.

Since then, other government agencies — including the municipalities of Palo Alto, Calif., and Los Angeles — have joined the lean-startup movement. The basic applications seem as limitless as they are logical: Move quickly, listen to crowd feedback and be ready to change in a heartbeat. We are embracing this concept and are building a community of lean-minded, innovative startups with crowdsourcing interests. Since we are always ready to pivot we held a UX Review Session with selected community members today. The feedback and inputs can be found on our getsatisfaction.com/globumbus page as well as on youtube. 

Always remember Ries' wise words: “Think big, start small, scale fast and be flexible. Life’s too short to have no impact.”

Contact us and we'll show you how it could work for your startup.

-bmt