CTIC-UP: Lean Startup support methodology for entrepreneurs and companies

Companies and entrepreneurs often faced the challenge of creating a new product or a new line of business. Given the constant and accelerating changes in the environment, traditional methodologies for creating companies, and even for production in business settings, proved insufficient.

As an alternative, CTIC applied agile methodologies such as Lean Startup to help entrepreneurs and companies discover their customers, define a well-targeted value proposition, and define their business model, from a dual perspective: supporting small and medium-sized companies that wanted to increase their innovation activity (a pre-innovation acceleration program), in order to improve their ability to compete in the market and meet their customers' needs; and mentoring entrepreneurs in creating companies that would incorporate innovation as a differentiating factor from the start.

The main objective was to properly validate the proposed business model in order to obtain valuable information that would allow the project's promoters to move forward or pivot, returning to the design and prototyping phases until achieving a better fit between what the market demanded and the products on offer (market fit). In contrast to traditional systems, in which the customer did not enter the picture until the product reached the market, Lean Startup placed the customer and their needs as the focus and starting point of the entire process, drawing on tools from disciplines such as customer development, design thinking, agile development methodologies, the business model canvas, and the value proposition canvas.

CTIC put this methodological framework into practice both with entrepreneurs and in established companies, with the aim of supporting their innovation processes and improving their competitiveness, through support provided by staff who are experts in these methodologies and have extensive ICT knowledge.