Lean Canvas Template
Build a business plan concisely and practically with the Lean Canvas Template. Present your business idea clearly and precisely.
About the Lean Canvas Template
The Lean Canvas Template helps you quickly build a business plan without the complexity usually involved in business plan templates. It’s a practical and concise way to present your business idea.
What is a Lean Canvas?
A Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan invented by Ash Maurya to provide a more straightforward business opportunity evaluation. It’s a simplified version of the business model canvas template and helps your team break down your idea into key assumptions, replacing cumbersome, time-consuming business plans.
How to use the Lean Canvas template
The Lean Canvas template consists of boxes you must fill out to complete the plan. Go through each prompt in turn, doing your best to articulate the answers in a simple, straightforward way. Don’t be afraid to iterate on your Lean Canvas.
Begin by selecting this Lean Canvas Template. You can edit any of these sections, changing them as necessary. You can fill the blocks with sticky notes, links, and files such as photos, videos, and PDFs. Share your board with others and invite them to collaborate with you.
In the Lean Canvas Template, you will find:
In the first row:
Problem
The questions you should ask:
What problem does your product or service seek to solve?
How common is this problem, and how many people have it?
How much would people be willing to pay to fix this problem?
Solution
What are the top three features of your product or service that work toward solving the problem?
Describe what makes your business innovative and creative inside your field or industry.
Unique value proposition
What are you bringing to the table that your competition is not?
How many competitors in this space are there, and what can you do to separate your business from theirs?
Unfair advantage
How can you ensure people will not copy your product?
What steps are you taking to maintain a competitive advantage?
Customer segments
Who are your prospects, and how do they connect to the problem?
In this step, you should identify specific personas among your potential customer base, how they perceive the problem you’re solving, and the unique value prop you can offer.
In the second row:
Existing alternatives
Are there any products or services that solve your business problem?
What are the current solutions available today?
Map out your competitor’s landscape and how people are currently adopting or not their solutions.
Key metrics
What indicators can you use to determine whether your product or service is working correctly and your business is succeeding?
Your key metrics can mix engagement statistics, revenue, and customer satisfaction scores.
High-level concept:
Explain your idea in a simple X for Y analogy (e.g., “Vegan meat options for vegans”).
Channels
What paths do you need to take to reach customers?
Understanding your customer segments is critical to informing this step. Know where your audience is and how to reach them. It can be over social media, content marketing, billboards, etc.
Early adopters:
Here is where you describe your ideal customer and who will adopt your product or service right away. They might help with spreading the word.
In the bottom row:
Cost structure
List all operational costs here.
What is the cost of customer acquisition?
What about distribution cost?
Identify key partners in your venture and look up costs of potential suppliers or manufacturers, shipping, and other logistical partners to get at the true cost of operating.
Revenue streams
What is your revenue model?
Gross margins?
What is the lifetime value of your product or service?
Make sure not just to model how much you will earn initially but recurring revenue and how much value you expect from each customer over time.
How to review your Lean Canvas template
Step back and consider everything you’ve mapped, and share with your team for alignment. Use this information to spot your business’s weaknesses and strengths and hone your overall strategy.
Remember, the biggest difference between the Business Model Canvas and the Lean Canvas is that the first focuses on a specific product while the latter focuses on a specific problem.
Benefits of using the Lean Canvas Template
A Lean Canvas is an easy way to brainstorm the various factors in determining the potential profitability of a business model.
1. Easy to complete: One of the significant advantages of the Lean Canvas Template is that it’s very simple and low-cost to create, unlike many other business tools. The most important thing is that you bring in all the relevant parties in your business to inform each canvas step.
2. A high-level overview of your business: It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day minutia of running a business and lose sight of the overall picture and goals. Using a Lean Canvas example keeps you focused on overall strategy and potential threats and opportunities to your business.
3. Incorporate internal and external factors: The Lean Canvas Template explores the internal strengths of your business and potential external threats and factors that may affect profitability. Then, you can use it to improve and update internal processes according to external factors.
Can I use a Lean Canvas template for existing businesses, or is it only for startups?
Although startups commonly use Lean Canvas, it can also be implemented by existing businesses, particularly when introducing new products, penetrating new markets, or pivoting the business model.
How often should I update my Lean Canvas?
The frequency of updates depends on the stage of your business. Startups may update it more frequently as they iterate through ideas, while established businesses might update it when undergoing significant changes or launching new initiatives.
Can I share my Lean Canvas with investors or stakeholders?
Sharing your Lean Canvas with investors or stakeholders is common. It provides a quick overview of your business concept and can be a discussion starting point.
Get started with this template right now.
Venn Diagram for Product Development
Works best for:
Venn Diagrams
Streamline your product development process with the Venn Diagram for Product Development template. Use it to compare product features, identify market needs, and explore design options. This template helps you visualize relationships and prioritize features based on customer requirements and competitive analysis. It's an essential tool for product managers, designers, and development teams aiming to create successful and user-centric products.
Sustainable Product Innovation Board
Works best for:
Product Management, Planning
The Sustainable Product Innovation Board template supports sustainable product development practices. By integrating sustainability criteria into product ideation, design, and implementation processes, this template fosters eco-friendly product innovation. With sections for evaluating environmental impacts and setting sustainability goals, it enables teams to create products that minimize ecological footprints and promote social responsibility. This template serves as a framework for driving sustainable business practices and meeting consumer demands for environmentally conscious products.
Fibonacci Scale Template
Works best for:
Agile Methodology, Prioritization, Agile Workflows
When you manage a team, you often have to estimate how much time and effort tasks will take to complete. Try what often works for Agile teams all over the world: Turn to the Fibonacci Scale for guidance. Based on the Fibonacci sequence, where each number is the summation of the two previous numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc.), this template can help you build timelines like a champ—by helping make sure that work is distributed evenly and that everyone is accurate when estimating the work and time involved in a project.
Example Mapping Template
Works best for:
Product Management, Mapping, Diagrams
To update your product in valuable ways—to recognize problem areas, add features, and make needed improvements—you have to walk in your users’ shoes. Example mapping (or user story mapping) can give you that perspective by helping cross-functional teams identify how users behave in different situations. These user stories are ideal for helping organizations form a development plan for Sprint planning or define the minimum amount of features needed to be valuable to customers.
Backlog Refinement with Jira Template
Works best for:
Agile, Backlog Refinement
The Backlog Refinement with Jira template in Miro improves collaboration among team members. It provides a visual and interactive space for teams to review, prioritize, and clarify upcoming work items together in real time. This collaborative approach ensures alignment on priorities and details, leading to a more organized and efficient workflow. The seamless integration with Jira automatically syncs all changes, reducing the need for manual updates and keeping both platforms up-to-date.
Cost-Benefit Analysis Template
Works best for:
Leadership, Decision Making, Strategic Planning
With so many day-to-day decisions to make—and each one feeling high-stakes—it’s easy for all the choices to weigh a business or organization down. You need a systematic way to analyze the risks and rewards. A cost benefit analysis gives you the clarity you need to make smart decisions. This template will let you conduct a CBA to help your team assess the pros and cons of new projects or business proposals—and ultimately help your company preserve your precious time, money, and social capital.