Lean-startup’s impact on new product development

Abstract

The current globalized environment puts companies in a cross path to either innovate or perish with time and high-intensity competition. This makes new product development and its best practices key stakes for any company wanting to construct a sustainable innovation advantage; to that end, many companies and ecosystem builders adopted and still are adopting the Lean-startup framework, which has gained popularity since its appearance in 2010.Even though it is widely popular, the literature on its exact impact is still insufficient, contrary to similar frameworks. In this dissertation, we try to discover what impact does Lean-startup has on new product development and, more precisely, from a financial performance and innovativeness perspective as well as taking into account circumstantial factors that could influence the adoption. This is done by developing a corrected scale for measuring Lean-startup adoption, followed by a quantitative methodology with product managers. Surprisingly the analysis showed no significant correlation between new product innovativeness and financial performance and Lean-startup adoption as a whole. However, a significant link was found with one of its components. The findings have implications for future Lean-startup research, product managers, and companies.