The May issue of HBR has an article on the learn startup model. Essentially, you need to prototype something, find clients quickly, get feedback and iterate again. The idea of “lean” is that you forgo deep planning and marketing that may not make sense since most plans change rapidly anyway.
There is alot of truth in that. I’ve helped startups (even in my early college and grad-school days) and certainly it makes sense to try something and keep iterating. I found that to be true with writing, software, management consulting ideas and a variety of areas.
However, its not universally true. You really do need deep thinking in some cases and some industries or in situations where just getting to the first prototype will consume significant capital. Hence, the idea is a good one, but should be judiciously applied. That’s not to say that getting continuous feedback is ever bad, it’s just that you need more than a prototype.
There is an old management principal around innovation. There is “learning while doing” model that says you cannot know everything or even 1/10th of what you need to know, so its better to get started and learn as you go. That’s the basic concept behind the lean startup (see here for more info on learning-by-doing which is concept from the Toyota system).
The concept is bouncing around the technical crowds as well. This article makes the case that you need to “learn fast” versus “fail fast, fail often” which is in the spirit of the lean startup. In fact, now there are learn canvases that you can put together. While there are alot of good ideas here, I think the only rule about employing them is “pick your rules carefully.”