“I had a team ready to explore 4 strategic opportunities. They needed a different way to work. Not another consulting deck.”
Before Building without customers.
You've seen this pattern. Engineers default to it: design the product, validate internally, build, then maybe show a customer. The Nissan lab was running it. Each of the four options had a 30-idea opportunity map. Internal stakeholders pulled for attention on each one. The team leads were ranking solutions before anyone had named a problem the customer would pay to solve.
“We had four strategic options and no way to know what the customer wanted.”
The Forward Protocol Customer insights in the first week.
We took the team in and fast-forwarded their development. They picked up the idea, identified the key target customers, and started talking to them within the week. The customer feedback came back fast. With it, they built a customer journey and surfaced the true pain points worth addressing. The next week confirmed those pain points were real.
We ran four teams in parallel like this, each chasing one of the strategic options. Every Monday we asked: what they'd learned, what they were testing next, what they needed unblocked. At week 4, every team defended its progress to a mid-term board of internal sponsors plus external investors. Pivot, persevere, or stop. Customer evidence decided.
“The conversations stopped being about how to build the idea and started being about what the customer actually needed.”
The rhythm was intense. The teams came back with good evidence. They put forward MVPs and started testing them directly with customers. Twelve weeks in, at demo day, the outcomes went to the board for next-round funding.
After The lab now builds what customers actually need.
Before
4 strategic options with no product.
0 customer interviews.
Building without customers.
After
6 MVPs with users.
30 customer interviews.
Operating model still running.
Now the team pulls the customer need first. They map the pain point and talk to the customer to confirm it. If the pain isn't real, the project doesn't move to engineering. The lab stopped building without customers. They back projects anchored in real customer pain.
The four launched MVPs included a new digital channel to reach customers directly. Another launched a new way to sell EVs through the dealer network. The two that didn't launch were killed. Customers had told the team they wouldn't pay.
“This became the operating model of the lab. We don't build anything if we haven't talked to customers first.”
Legacy. The Forward Protocol became the operating model of the Nissan Innovation Lab and has run that way ever since. Every team after the first cohort adopted the same protocol. The mid-term investor board became a permanent governance fixture. No product ships without customer evidence on the slide.
How GE, Toyota, Intuit and Bayer run lean startup, and what it takes to make it work: Lean startup in large companies, a guide on Franck's blog.