Last December (2011), many of us learned about an exciting initiative by Stanford University: FREE courses on a wide rank of topics.

There were few to no details on the courses specifications, just general info and a vague statement about some courses launching on January and February. I signed up for some of them, of course! Stanford for free?! Steve Blank’s?! I’m absolutely in.

Attendants received no welcoming mail, nor any guides on the program, the platform or such. Ain’t it odd? Stanford is a top-notch University, and this amateurish registration process doesn’t really preserves the excellence image they are expected to keep.

We might put the blame on the managers of the project for their sloppiness, but I’m feeling in a conspirative theory mood. Stanford might be applying best practices from the lean startup methodology. And this is how I picture they have done it:

• First they launched their Minimum Viable Product (MVP): simple as a few landing pages with some videos and registration forms [build stage]
• Second they measure their courses’ demand: outstanding figures here [measure stage]
• Third they decide what is the proper strategy to satisfy that demand: methodology, process and appropriate platforms [learn stage]

From a lean perspective such approach would be close to an optimal use of resources. Why wasting time and efforts designing pedestrian programs based on unlikely projections and forecasts? Why building on hypothesis when you can actually measure your true reach and optimize your product based on reality and facts?

So, what do you think? I might be just delusional… Or maybe lean methodology has just penetrated education. If it is so, it could be a huge step forward for higher education. If only universities could learn faster, their students could go out to the real world armed up with relevant hard and soft skills for real life.