Ten years after they first introduced lean startup thinking to the association world, Elizabeth Weaver Engel and Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate are back to reflect on what’s changed—and what remains the same. This time, they’ve partnered with Cultural Scientist Jamie Notter to co-author Lean at Ten: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch, a paper that explores why organizational culture continues to be the defining factor in whether innovation efforts thrive or falter.
To dig deeper, we asked Elizabeth and Jamie to share insights on how associations can shift from cultures that resist innovation to ones that embrace it. And because there is so much great information, we’ve divided it into two posts:
👇 Part 1: Elizabeth and Jamie offer a practical look at how Lean Startup provides a structured, evidence-based framework for testing ideas, learning quickly, and making smarter decisions.
👉 Part 2: Elizabeth and Jamie share why culture is still the biggest barrier to innovation, and how associations can begin to dismantle perfectionism and fear of failure to foster a culture of experimentation and growth.
Grab a cup of coffee – or tea – and read on…
Lean Startup as a Practical, Learnable Innovation Framework
— Elizabeth Engel
Q: The association world has changed since that first paper. Has the concept of Lean Startup changed as well? Put another way, have those changes altered Lean Startup in any way?
ELIZABETH: The core tenets of the methodology – the lean canvas business plan; the Build-Measure-Learn cycle; the Minimum Viable Product; Metrics That Matter; learning that leads to a decision to persevere, pivot, or kill a project – haven’t changed. The conditions that Ries developed lean startup to mitigate – having to make critical business decisions in an environment of extreme uncertainty, unpredictable futures, rapid change, and a growing array of alternatives – have only accelerated in the intervening years.
I would argue that the main things that have changed in the past decade are there’s increased impetus to use the methodology coupled with a better understanding of the reasons why we don’t, at least not successfully, which is what we set out to address in the new monograph.
Q: How prevalent would you say is the Lean Startup methodology used in the association world?
ELIZABETH: Well, recognizing that we haven’t done a comprehensive survey and that I’m a proponent of the methodology, I would say that it’s not used nearly frequently enough. That was, in fact, one of the things that motivated us to tackle the topic again. Eric Ries wrote The Lean Startup in 2011. We wrote the first white paper in 2015. The methodology is not new. There are ample examples of it being used successfully in all sorts of contexts. So why are associations – an industry I would argue is a perfect fit for lean startup – not using it more? We set out to answer that question, and the answer we came up with was Culture.
JAMIE: Like Elizabeth, I don’t have hard data on the usage, but I do have an aggregate data set from our culture assessment (completed by a good number of associations), and I can say that the specific practices of innovation—experimenting, beta testing, taking risks—are, an average, not very present inside organizations. These are critical to effective Lean Startup, so it’s a pretty safe bet to say that associations are not using it more.
Q: The design thinking stage, an important component of innovation, uses a human-centered approach toward creative problem-solving. Can you give us a brief look at what this entails and how it differs from the standard survey approach?
ELIZABETH: Design thinking is more akin to ethnographic research than to surveying. In its ideal form, the researcher embeds in the research subjects’ operating environments to develop deep understanding of those environments. That would look like going to your members’ offices, businesses, classrooms, work sites, and factories to observe, learn, and perceive their worlds from their viewpoint. That’s probably a little more involved than most associations are willing or able to get – you can’t spare the staff to do that nor afford that level of investment with consultants – but it does illustrate the member-centric or audience-centric perspective you need to develop in order to empathetically understand their most pressing problems and most important goals so that you can create something new that adds value (in other words, innovate) to help them solve those problems and achieve those goals.
Q: What is one thing you wish every association executive understood about innovation?
JAMIE: Innovation can be defined very broadly, from incremental improvements in processes, to complete transformation of business models. Choose the level of innovation you want wisely, and don’t always stay in the safer “improvement” zone. The real potential of innovation is in unlocking new value by working outside the rules of the game.
ELIZABETH: We talk about innovation like it’s magic or a function of luck, like hitting the lottery. It’s not. There’s an evidence-based and well-documented process you can learn and follow to help your innovation efforts proceed better, placing small bets and developing deep, empathetic knowledge of your audiences, and ensuring that you’ve identified a problem worth solving for them, that your solution works, and that it’s at a price they’re willing to pay.
Q: Looking ahead, how do you see AI and automation influencing the future of Lean Startup in associations?
JAMIE: In short, AI can speed things up, and that works well for the iterative nature of lean startup. If you understand how to use AI, know its strengths and weaknesses (which are evolving rapidly), and can use it ethically, I think it will help associations get to the learning piece faster. By cutting your cycle times, you will get to the payoff faster.
*This is a 2-part Q&A with Elizabeth Weaver Engel and Jamie Notter, co-authors along with Guillermo Ortiz de Zárate, on their whitepaper Lean at Ten: Culture Eats Methodology for Lunch, a look at why organizational culture continues to be the defining factor in whether innovation efforts thrive or falter. By embracing a mindset of learning and leveraging tools like design thinking and AI, associations can unlock meaningful innovation and avoid costly missteps.
• Part 1 focuses on how Lean Startup remains a powerful, learnable framework that helps organizations test ideas, uncover real needs, and make smarter decisions.
• Part 2 focuses on how culture plays an important role in determining success, and when associations embrace change at the cultural level, innovation becomes not just possible, but sustainable.