Customer development and BMGEN in Japan
meeting at EGG in Shin-Marunouchi building together with Takashi Tsutsumi and Masato Iino (fb)
Tsutsumi-san is a Japanese VC at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital; he is the translator of “The Startup Owner’s Manual” by Steve Blank. Masato-san is the founder and COO of NantMobile (web), a web startup. Both are evangelists of the “Customer Development” and “Lean Startup” approach.
They also run the Japanese version of the “Lean Launchpad” program for entrepreneurs and “i-Corp” program for scientists, inspired by the Steve Blank and Jerry Engel’s programs (iCorp).
See Tsutsumi’s blog post on the Steve’s blog here and one of his slideshare in English here (in Japanese here)
In addition to the extensive use of the Business Model Canvas, they also present and use the “Picto” model defined by Dr. Satoru Itabashi, who I met last year at Keio University. Dr. Satoru Itabashi authored the book Picto (web) (amazon) describing the Itabashi diagrammatic problem solving method for visual thinkers. In their work with Prof. Yoko Ishikura, they combine the BMGEN canvas and the Itabashi diagrams for defining business models.
EGG JAPAN (Entrepreneur Group for Growing JAPAN) is a platform for creating new businesses (more)
