Steve Blank: The Class That Changed How Entrepreneurship Is Taught

Originally published for Poets & Quants by Steve Blank, Adjunct Professor of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

This is the class that changed the way entrepreneurship is taught.

Two decades ago, I never intended to start a revolution in entrepreneurship, but the Lean Startup did just that. For the first time it offered founders a method – different from those used by large companies — for how to build new ventures.

A decade later, it never crossed my mind to upend entrepreneurial education. But I realized that teaching entrepreneurs case studies and business plans was just “education theater” — they allowed educators to believe they were teaching something of value when they weren’t. In their defense, there wasn’t an alternative. So I created the Lean LaunchPad classes and moved entrepreneurship education into the 21st century.

Revolutions start by overturning the status quo. By the end of the 20th century, case studies and business plans had reached an evolutionary dead-end for entrepreneurs.

Here’s why, and what we did about it.