Ideas and methods of lean and agile startup in the VUCA Era

In today’s volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) era, entrepreneurs face highly uncertain startup environments. Thus, traditional methods for launching startup businesses must address the challenges associated with uncertain environments. Based on the definition of startup as “the practical activity of starting a business in an uncertain environment”, the greatest challenge in startup is reducing uncertainty. Thus, this paper defines the lean and agile startup (LAS) method by using the business model canvas (BMC) as an iterative tool and combining the customer development (CD) method and agile method (AM). LAS is an upgraded version of lean startup (LS) that provides entrepreneurs with a “0-to-1” startup exploration method. It allows entrepreneurs to promote startup exploration activities through the “hypothesis-exploration-test-cognition” iterative model, thereby evolving their ideas into sustainable business models. Moreover, this paper articulates a developmental approach for building iterative startup software based on LAS. It therefore offers entrepreneurs a convenient and visual iterative tool for startup to improve the effectiveness of startup exploration. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11365-022-00797-3.