VALUE
LAB
free and open tools for
startups and strategy
What is Value Lab?
Value Lab is a research-based tool for startups, incubators, innovation ventures and strategy. It offers a scientific, experiment-oriented, practical approach to value creation.
The tool is designed to be used in the classroom, in startup training or coaching, strategy consulting and other such settings. Value Lab provides the scaffolding for startups and companies to develop their own, unique strategy.
On this web page we will post additional tools, slides, tutorials, frequently asked questions, and other materials.
You can find the Value Lab paper here. Stay tuned for more.
Who is using it?
The Value Lab tool is being used in a number of programs including:
University of Oxford Diploma in Strategy & Innovation - see here
University of Utah's Master in Business Creation program - see here
Bocconi University, Department of Management and Technology
Cambridge University (Engineering)
industrial strategy project, Living Lab - see here and here
If you decide to use Value Lab in any of your classroom or other interactions, please let us know. We'd love to hear about your experiences with the tool.
What about lean startup?
Download open access paper -
Teppo Felin, Alfonso Gambardella, Scott Stern & Todd Zenger. 2020. Lean startup and the business model: Experimentation revisited. Long Range Planning.
There are many startup, strategy and venture-related tools and frameworks out there - such as lean startup and the business model canvas.
So why not use them?
They have their place. But we think approaches like lean startup are too incremental. The focus on minimum viable products leads companies to do the wrong type of experimentation. It also offers little guidance on what to pivot to.
Startups need to instead figure out what their unique beliefs are - and develop their own hypothesis and theory of value. And only then experiment.
Read more here, in this Medium article titled "Lean startup revisited."
Scientific background
(click on images to read paper)
Camuffo, A., Cordova, A., Gambardella, A., & Spina, C. 2020. A scientific approach to entrepreneurial decision making: Evidence from a randomized control trial. Management
Science.
Felin, T., & Zenger, T. R. 2017. The theory-based view: Economic actors as theorists.
Strategy Science.
Related literature
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Academy of Management Annals.
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Chater, N., et al. 2018. Mind, rationality, and cognition. Psych Bulletin & Review.
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Chatterji, A., Delecourt, S., Hasan, S., & Koning, R. 2019. When does advice impact startup performance? Strategic Management Journal.
Contigiani, A., & Levinthal, D. A. 2019. Situating the construct of lean start-up. Industrial and Corporate Change.
Eggers, J. P., & Moeen, M. 2018. Entry strategy for nascent industries.
Strategic Management Journal.
Felin, T., & Zenger, T. R. 2009. Entrepreneurs as theorists: on the origins of collective beliefs and novel strategies. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.
Fink, T., Ghemawat, P., & Reeves, M. 2017. Searching for great strategies. Strategy Science.
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Zenger, T. R. 2016. Beyond competitive advantage. Harvard Business Press.
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Azevedo, E. M., Alex, D., Montiel Olea, J., Rao, J. M., & Weyl, E. G. 2020. A/B testing with fat tails. Journal of Political Economy.
Benner, M. J., & Zenger, T. 2016. The lemons problem in markets for strategy. Strategy Science.
Bennett, V. M., & Chatterji, A. K. 2019. The entrepreneurial process: Evidence from a nationally representative survey. Strategic Management Journal.
Brandenburger, A. M., & Stuart Jr, H. W. 1996. Value‐based business strategy Journal of Economics & Management Strategy.
Cohen, S., Fehder, D. C., Hochberg, Y. V., & Murray, F. 2019. The design of startup accelerators. Research Policy.
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Administrative Science Quarterly.
Felin, T., & Zenger, T. R. 2016. Strategy, problems, and a theory for the firm. Organization Science.
Felin, T., & Zenger, T. R. 2014. Closed or open innovation? Problem solving and the governance choice.
Research Policy.
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Organizing entrepreneurial judgment: A new approach to the firm. Cambridge University Press.
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Gibbons, R. 2005. Four formal (izable) theories of the firm. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.
Ghemawat, P. 1991. Commitment. Simon and Schuster.
Karni, E., & Vierø, M. L. 2013.
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American Economic Review.
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Pollman, E. 2019. Startup governance. Penn Law Review.
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Crown Business.
More to come - for educators,
startups, incubators and VCs.
