The Lean Entrepreneur. Vlaskovits Patrick

very hard to thrust somebody into the role of designing something for themselves, something very personal like a prosthetic limb. It’s like the extreme version of telling somebody to design their own tattoo. We all generally don’t do that, because we’re not used to doing that in our daily lives.

      So we typically show people the art we have, the patterns, the designs we’ve done in the past, and we use that as a kickoff point. We say, “By the way, we can change this material. We can add details if you like. If there are patterns that you like..” We try to tease that out of them because ultimately we don’t want them to simply select from our preexisting work. That doesn’t take what we offer to its fullest potential. So we encourage people to cut loose a bit and look inside themselves and see what would make it the most personal and give them the most connection to it.

      Then there’s the technology part of the process. We do a 3D scan of their body and turn the images into usable data by running them through software that uses different cleaning algorithms and meshing algorithms. From that data, we actually mirror the person’s sound-side leg and superimpose it over their lost leg. We align it by eye; there is a lot of craft involved. We line it up until it looks like it is in a natural location on the body based on the scan. That will be the reference for the rest of the process because now the body will be symmetric no matter what we do and it will be unique no matter what we do. The process philosophically goes to the heart of what we do because it generates what we think are the most important elements we offer: symmetry and uniqueness.

      We have a number of templates that we’ve developed, which are partially mechanical and allow us to attach elements to the substructure of the prosthesis. The templates might create the design pattern, for example, herringbone tweed or a lace or a lattice, and we start mixing these templates into the computer files, playing with them to create the aesthetic we’re striving for.

      The final step is that once we have the data, we do a lot of communication with the client. We send them images of the prosthetic, which are photographically accurate even though they’re virtual. When they’re ready to pull the trigger, we send the files out to a third party who three-dimensionally prints the parts. We have a few post-processing steps we can apply depending on what the person is looking for, and then we’re ready to send them to the person.

      How they use them and how their life changes is up to them. We encourage them to communicate back to us when they’re ready, because it’s exciting for us and rewarding. We hear of stories where women all of a sudden are buying clothes to match their fairing. We recently had a case where this woman wore a beautiful dress and shoes that really brought out the best in the fairing we had created for her.

      The woman said she had been creatively hiding her prosthetic for eight years under stockings with foam pads and suddenly she’s wearing skirts that show it as it is and it just looks great and she doesn’t care about people seeing it and knowing that she’s an amputee.

      We’ve had soldiers, guys who don’t express emotion readily, say they feel naked without it or they wouldn’t walk out the front door without it. We’ve had people come to us and they have a gym sock pulled up over their prosthetic limb and they have three or four other socks stuffed into it to approximate a calf shape. People are mostly not comfortable with the fact that a part of their body is a bunch of skinny little titanium pipes; it’s disheartening. So this process gives the prosthetic a dynamism, a suggestion of life. Even though intuitively we know better, it suddenly imbues the prosthetic with a sense of life that it wouldn’t otherwise have.

      We look at our business as a fundamental departure from the traditional thinking, which is to do a ton of research up front, market-research the hell out of it, focus-group it, and throw in a ton of investment hoping that you’re going to capitalize on the backside with a huge return on investment.

      We’re saying let’s turn the whole thing on its head. Have a very nimble process where we can print one thing and if we think it’s valuable and compelling, it can become an entire product line, because we don’t have inventory; we print to order. If the next person walks in the door and says, “Hey, I’ve got this thing – my neck muscles gave out,” we’re ready to go and can do a quick scan and before they leave we can have a custom product created or at least in the process of being created. You can’t do that with traditional manufacturing.

      When a disruptive technology comes along, it doesn’t just change the way you do things; it changes the entire culture of the way you look at doing that thing. Online travel sites, for example, like Travelocity and Expedia, didn’t just change the way we book a flight; they changed the way we approach traveling as a culture.

      For the past 20 years, I was able to look at people with amputations and think, “I would love to do something about creating a better prosthetic leg.” I could think about it and think about it and I wouldn’t get anywhere. It wasn’t until the technologies matured to the point where they became viable that I could start putting different elements together in the right way. Then I could start thinking differently and say, “Okay, now we look at prosthetics and don’t think of them just as technology solutions, but think of the problem of a missing limb and whether there is a way to incorporate design and the arts and human emotion into the solution.” It invites us or it challenges us to see problems and solutions in an entirely different light.

      CUE THE LEAN STARTUP

      Whether you are a startup or a big business trying to revitalize growth, save your company, or protect against the future; whether you are high-tech, low-tech, or somewhere in between; whether you are business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C), or business-to-business-to-consumer, you are at the mercy of the value-creation economy.

      To succeed, grow, and thrive, you must be focused on creating real value for known customers. You must be fast, agile, quick-thinking, and quick-acting. You must continually improve your output, along with your output process. You must be a leader and a fast follower. You must be like a basketball point guard shadowing your opponent, anticipating moves, and reacting fast.

      In other words, you must be able to innovate sustainably and disruptively.

      Clearly, this is no small task. While lean startup principles can be applied across the innovation spectrum, they are geared toward uncertainty and therefore optimized for entrepreneurial endeavors tending toward the disruptive end. Traditionally, business advice – be it journalistic or the kind offered at business schools – has tended toward sustaining.

      We have learned how to conceptualize and implement the lean startup based on our myriad experiences. You may be thinking: The principles of lean startup aren’t new. True, you can find similar elements in design thinking, user experience (UX) design, and discovery-driven planning, to name a few.

      But we believe that the current economy, along with major changes in the marketplace, and the implications of the digital age make the principles of lean startup more learnable, applicable, and measurable than ever before.

      You may also be thinking: The principles are great, but they don’t apply to my business, such as with a large enterprise, hardware products, services, health care, life sciences, nonprofits, and so on. But we urge you to think back to any failed endeavor: Was there something you could have tested that might have provided you with an early indication that you were on the path toward failure?

      MEET THE LEAN ENTREPRENEUR

      The lean in lean startup does not mean a small startup, or a skinny one. It doesn’t mean a lack of raising or spending money. It doesn’t reflect on the ambition of the founders or whether or not they’re “thinking big.”

      The term lean comes from lean manufacturing, as represented by the Toyota Production System, or how Toyota began manufacturing cars in Japan in the 1950s. Basically, lean manufacturing is about optimizing efficiency in all value-adding activities, and minimizing or eliminating all non-value-adding activities, where value-adding means providing value to customers. Customers include both the final user of the product and internal customers who link activities through the life cycle of product development and delivery.