Filling Out the Lean Change Canvas

Initially fill each of the nine boxes in the canvas with one or more hypotheses. The Lean Change Canvas template in Figure 4.1 shows questions embedded in each box as prompts for generating the right hypotheses, and the answer to each of these questions is one or more hypotheses. The discovery stage focuses on making sure you understand the problem and that you’ve crafted a solution that could actually work for those you’re targeting. So the most important boxes in the early stages of an innovation are Value Proposition and Targets, followed closely by Channels/Pathways and Revenue Streams.

To help you speed through this step, I’ve chosen four examples of diverse social sector projects to illustrate how to fill out the canvas for a diverse range of innovations. They are simplified case studies drawn from real-world nonprofit and government projects, not all of which were successful!

• Smarter, Cleaner, Stronger. SCS was the economic element of a legislative campaign for the Climate Stewardship Act between 2003 and 2007.

• Catalog Choice. CC is a behavioral/norms campaign to reduce junk mail.

• The National Museum of the American Indian. NMAI at the Smithsonian is an example of a major infrastructure project undertaken by a government agency.

• The New York City Toilet Bowl Retrofit Program. NYCTB was a ten-year, $300 million water conservation program that reduced water consumption in the city by 25 percent.

For each box, I’ll sketch out key hypotheses for the different projects to help illustrate how to use the Lean Change Canvas in practice.