N. Korea as lean startup
By Jason Lim
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The question foremost in everyone's mind is, “Why now?” Why has Kim Jong-un engaged in the full-court press rapprochement with his key geopolitical stakeholders at this time? What made 2018 so special to Kim?
Trying to figure out North Korea using the traditional international relations analytical paradigm ― realist, internationalist and constructivist ― has largely been a failure, so what about stealing from other disciplines to see if their frameworks might fit better. I am especially intrigued by a thought experiment of looking at North Korea through the lens of the “Lean Startup.”
Popularized by Eric Ries, the lean startup is a methodology for starting a business that, according to Steve Blank in the Harvard Business Review, “favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition and iterative design over traditional 'big design up front' development.” Blank summarizes three key principles of the lean startup.
First, instead of delving into prolonged business planning, put your best guesses about the proposed business or product's chances of success in a framework called the business model canvas. Elements of the canvas include responses to questions such as, “Who are our customers, what customer needs are we solving, and who are our key partners?”
Second, rapidly prototype your minimum viable product (MVP) to the market and elicit feedback. Ries defines MVP as the “version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. The goal of an MVP is to test fundamental business hypotheses (or leap-of-faith assumptions) and to help entrepreneurs begin the learning process as quickly as possible.”
Third, engage in agile development, which is an inclusive and iterative process of refining the product.
What if Kim views his nation as a lean start up, imagines himself as a budding entrepreneur and is trying to apply its methodology? Let's do a thought experiment and see how we can apply the lean principles to the current situation.
The most important business canvas question for Kim is, “Who are my customers?” Well, there are many, but the most important one isn't South Korea, the U.S., or even China. His core customers are those who directly help support his regime. These are his fellow elites, descendants of the original revolutionaries who fought with his grandfather, who are tied to one another by intermarriages and have largely (at least the sons and grandsons) inherited state positions. The longevity and vitality of any king in Korean history was always dependent on a negotiated give-and-take between the monarch and its elites. Today's North Korea is no exception.
The traditional MVP for this customer group is the security of the current system originally built to their advantage. They would insist on the continuation of their privileged political status and increasing wealth in a society where money is increasingly talking. Operational nuclear capability (or the claim as such) could have been the baseline MVP since it represented a guarantee against foreign attempts to overthrow the regime.
But the feedback loop might have indicated something more. This group's MVP might also include the desire to step outside their small country and engage more freely with the international community more normally, instead of sneaking around and labeled as pariahs. “We got the money and polish,” they could claim to Kim, “and we want to travel, spend and educate our children like elites in other countries do.”
In that sense, based on the feedback, Kim might be rapidly prototyping his new MVP with his core customer base. In addition to the security and sustainability of their domestic elite status, the enhanced value proposition would also include, “expanded lifestyle-enhancing opportunities based on international recognition and respect.”
On the third principle of agile methodology, Kim actually seems to be executing something similar already with his roundtable summit meetings with key stakeholder countries. He has met China's leader and presumably iterated his baseline negotiating position. And now he met South Korea, which will lead to the next sprint of his agile development cycle. The final meeting would be with the U.S., which could represent the initial user acceptance testing. Then reiterate the product with the key stakeholder groups ― through a second round of summits perhaps ― until it meets their expectations, as long as it also satisfies the core customers' MVP.
Admittedly, cramming North Korea's nuclear diplomacy into the lean startup framework might be a little bit facetious. But it's not entirely far-fetched in that it could give an insight into what's really important to Kim and perhaps even reframe the question from “What's driving Kim's timing?” to “Who is driving Kim's timing?” And what might ultimately be the desired end-state for North Korea.
Jason Lim (jasonlim@msn.com) is a Washington, D.C.-based expert on innovation, leadership and organizational culture. He has been writing for The Korea Times since 2006.