Lean Placemaking for Cities

You may not know that cities, like startups, can run experiments to test new initiatives. Urban design expert, Mariela Alfonzo shows us how she has applied Lean Startup to urban planning to and created a tool that helps cities generate and test their hypotheses effectively.

Create a Culture of Experimentation

What happens when your team uses Lean Startup methods, but other people in your organization don’t? Manuel Rosso, VP of Commerce at Scripps Networks Interactive, explains how his team taught coworkers to value experimentation over expertise.

Mobile Experiments: Easier Than You Think

Mobile development presents particular challenges for experimentation. With competing operating systems and app stores to contend with, how can you move rapidly? Sheena Allen of Sheena Allen Apps walks us through the framework she used for launching–and learning from–six mobile apps on various platforms.

Lean Brand Building

Defining a brand can be risky, especially in the early days of startup, when your market and product are still geling. In this talk, Laura Busche, author of Lean Branding, will share practical tips for useful, early-stage brand-building.

Experiments in Humor

You know that people respond to humor in marketing and even in products. But you also know that you don’t want to be responsible for cringe-inducing messages that misses the humor mark. Good news: You can take the risk out of being funny. In this talk, Rachman Blake, Director of Growh at AppHeroes and Co-founder at FunnyBizz, teaches techniques for experimenting your way into funniness.

How a 30-Year-Old Hardware Company Is Bringing Products to Market 3x Faster

Hardware companies face particular challenges testing and iterating on their product ideas. It’s often cost-prohibitive to get an MVP in the hands of customers, and it can be seemingly impossible to ramp up production cycles. But you can push the boundaries of convention. Kevin Ellsworth, Product Manager at Cirris, explains how his team has built systems for consistent learning that have helped them release new products over a matter of months rather than years.

Tactics for Truly Effective Experiment Design

It’s deceptively easy to test the wrong aspect of your business, wasting time and money while you head down the wrong path. Rather than test the wrong hypotheses or an inappropriate risk for your stage of product development, learn from Grace Ng, co-founder at QuickMVP, as she lays out road-tested tactics for truly effective experiment design.

Identify and Validate Your Riskiest Assumptions

MVPs are great–unless you’re building them to test assumptions that aren’t really mission-critical. In this hands-on session, Laura Klein, author of UX for Lean Startups and head of product development for Hint Health, breaks down the kinds of assumptions you should look for and a process for developing hypotheses that reveal your true barriers to growth.