Advocates of the lean startup method for creating a business advise entrepreneurs, as well as corporate intrapreneurs, to document, test, and refine their assumptions about a new venture’s business model via customer conversations and experiments. My recent research on 250 teams that participated in an American cleantech accelerator program during the last 10 years found that while the lean approach can be effective, having a strong strategy is more important than conducting a tremendous number of market tests.
