Lean Canvas Advantages to Boost Your Business’ Agility

It is no secret that starting your own business can be pretty overwhelming. Almost 75% of startups fail because their created products or apps did not quite resonate with the market demand. In these scenarios, it’s important that your business is quick on its feet and has a comprehensive understanding of your business model. A Lean Canvas is an ideal way to display this information, and in this article, we will outline some of the essential Lean Canvas advantages.

Having a manual thick business plan may help while pitching for funds but offers no help when it comes to testing out your ideas in the early stages of your business. Nor does a conventional business model. Luckily with the vast advantages of the lean canvas, business startup founders can now increase the odds of success.

Lean Canvas Explained

Created by Ash Maurya, the Lean Canvas was created for entrepreneurs to help them get a straightforward idea of what they’re doing. It is essentially a page-long business plan model adapted from the Business Model Canvas by Alexander Osterwalder.

In our comprehensive guide, we define a lean canvas as: “The Lean Canvas is an adaptation of the traditional business model canvas that is optimized to consolidate a plan focused on maximizing user value.”

Creating a lean canvas is relatively simple. The diagram highlights several sections to help you map out key points that help turn your business idea into something more concrete. Once you have the blank template, start by carefully filling each box based on your business model or value proposition.

Lean Canvas Advantages

One extremely important task an entrepreneur must accomplish before starting a new business is taking their vision and documenting it in a format that can be easily communicated. Just like the Business Model Canvas, Lean Canvas also focuses on transparent business planning, but when compared to the former, the following Lean Canvas advantages are worth looking into.

A Great Problem-solving Strategy

The Lean Canvas allows a problem-solving strategy to be easily described on paper. One of its key benefits is how it helps entrepreneurs and business startups put their ideas into perspective and serves as a guide to diagram their hypotheses. The lean canvas’s ultimate goal is to flesh out the business’s core value proposition and find ways to solve customer pain points. By doing this, people can successfully view how their product/service solves a significant problem.

Provides Actionable Ideas

The lean canvas model is adapted from pre-existing models like any other business planning tool. The lean canvas adopts the same structure as the business model canvas with some structural changes to make it more actionable and provide a different focus.

Compared with other templates, one of the critical advantages of the lean canvas is that instead of being used for strategic alignments, the lean canvas is suited for actionable approaches in validating ideas and questioning if they fit the goals of the business. The collaborative nature of this template helps fulfill this vision by integrating multiple perspectives. This opens up what is possible with a company and allows people to express unique action items that can make a difference. 

A Living Business Model

Another increasingly important advantage of Lean Canvas is providing a clear and concise means of communication. As an entrepreneur, documenting your startup journey can be very challenging, especially when done traditionally. 

The Lean Canvas is a diagram that can be quickly created and updated at any time. It isn’t cluttered like other documents and can be easily updated whenever there are changes in the business. As a result, it offers tremendous help while communicating your vision with your team, partners, investors, and employees.

Conveys Ideas Efficiently

The Lean Canvas is a template that helps entrepreneurs rapidly formulate and refine business concepts, develop product launches, identify the target market, and establish key differentiators. Not only this but with Lean Canvas, entrepreneurs can easily communicate with key stakeholders by communicating core business ideas or concepts efficiently. By using Lean Canvas, you can convey ideas more effectively to your team and the outside world.

Learn more: What is a Lean Canvas?

Conclusion

Launching a startup or a new business is no doubt a complex process. However, if you are well acquainted with these lean canvas advantages, the transition can be relatively straightforward. Now that you are well aware of the Lean Canvas advantages adapting it for your startup is the least you can do for success.