The Challenge.
Many growth initiatives look ready for execution. But around
are hidden bets.
They build on untested assumptions.
These assumptions often stay hidden until deadlines slip, targets come under pressure, or dashboards turn red.
That is where corporate growth ambitions quietly drift..
The Challenge Solved.
From Hidden Bets to Paying Customers.
One of Amadeus’ growth initiatives had spent years in incubation without a clear path to market. Critical assumptions prevented the initiative from gaining commercial traction and scaling. Today it serves more than a dozen airline customers, including Lufthansa, and generates eight-figure revenues.
In this video, Amadeus’ Steve Kopp explains why they changed their approach and how it helped turn a stalled initiative into a growing business.
More Success Stories.
Meet some of our clients.
Their names and companies are sanitized for confidentiality.
Like you, they were responsible for growth.
Some led business units. Some led innovation teams. Some were responsible for strategic growth initiatives.
Like you, they faced uncertainty.
Growth plans looked solid. Funding was approved. Yet important assumptions remained untested.
Like you, they needed more than confidence.
They needed decision-grade evidence before committing more capital, resources, and credibility.
They turned hidden bets into business results.
What did they get? Faster decisions. Better alignment. Stronger growth outcomes.
We had identified a promising growth opportunity and generated strong market interest. But our leadership team was not ready to commit significant capital or give the business greater autonomy.
The key question was not whether the opportunity was attractive. The question was whether we had enough evidence to support a major commitment.
We worked with Lean Scaleup advisors to identify the critical assumptions, strengthen the evidence base, and prepare a growth case that leadership could confidently support.
Our company had no shortage of ideas, technology, or investment. Yet strategic growth initiatives moved slowly. Progress depended on multiple business units, functions, and stakeholders, making it difficult to build momentum and scale.
The challenge was not generating opportunities. The challenge was turning promising initiatives into growth businesses that the organisation would actively support.
We worked with Lean Scaleup advisors to align business units and corporate functions around shared growth objectives, secure support beyond funding, and design the structures, governance, and decision processes needed to move faster.
Our growth business had proven market demand and secured funding to accelerate customer growth. Leadership support was strong, and the next stage of expansion was approved.
But funding alone would not determine success. We needed access to corporate assets, capabilities, and expertise to reduce risk and accelerate growth.
We worked with Lean Scaleup advisors to create alignment between the growth business and key business units, establish mutually beneficial collaboration models, and secure the support required to scale faster without creating friction inside the organisation.
Recognized for Innovation.
Known for Growth.
Lean Scaleup has been recognized by Thinkers360 as one of the Top 50 Thought Leading Companies on Innovation 2025 — alongside organizations such as Microsoft and EY.
Today, we are best known for helping leadership teams identify hidden bets, expose critical assumptions early, and create decision-grade evidence before major commitments are made.
Our work focuses on helping companies make growth ambitions deliver: improving the quality of growth decisions, aligning business units and growth initiatives, and preventing costly surprises before they become visible in results.
Solutions.
Growth ambitions rarely fail because the ambition was not big enough. They fail because hidden assumptions stay hidden, support beyond funding never materializes, and important issues only become visible when growth targets come under pressure.
When growth initiatives drift, leaders rarely lose only time and money. They also put credibility, future investment decisions, and strategic commitments at risk.
Below, you’ll find our two core solutions: one helps you create decision-grade evidence before major commitments are made. The other helps you align the organization around growth once commitments have been made.
The References.
Amadeus…
One of Amadeus’ growth initiatives had spent years in incubation without a clear path to market. Critical assumptions prevented the initiative from gaining commercial traction and scaling. Today it serves more than a dozen airline customers, including Lufthansa, and generates eight-figure revenues.
In In a recent video, Amadeus’ Steve Kopp explained s why they changed their approach and how it helped turn a stalled initiative into a growing business.
… and more.
You can filter the list by industry sector by clicking on the relevant headline.
The Books.
Why is out-of-the-box innovation mandatory?
How to leverage your company’s assets and capabilities effectively?
How to create a setup for success?
Understand why most companies fail because their frameworks are not sufficient.
Get inspiration from from case studies and Best Practices.
Learn which pieces your company needs to put in place.
Benefit from the framework that helped dozens of companies succeed.
And The Framework.
The Lean Scaleup™ – A systematic approach to succeed in out-of-the-box innovation. Actionable and practical.
Co-created by 100+ corporate and academic experts.
The thesis: To solve the scaling challenge, your company needs to make two distinct value creation systems work together: Winning NOW (some call this Exploit or Perform) and creating NEW (Explore or Transform).
To do so, companies need to build a bridge between NOW and NEW and acquire four learnable skills.
The Framework as Podcast.
For a more comprehensive understanding, please have a look at chapter 5 of the book "NOW and NEW."
The Insights.
See All
⏵ Frequently Asked Questions.
Creating new growth beyond the existing business requires more than early-stage innovation.
It needs a structured system to create ideas with company-fit and to scale validated ideas.
The Lean Scaleup framework provides this system, enabling corporates to build profitable, scalable new businesses inside the enterprise.
Most ventures stall because they lack alignment between strategy, governance, and execution.
Innovation teams work in isolation, and the core business often resists integration.
Lean Scaleup solves this by aligning all key actors — from C-suite to delivery teams — around one growth journey.
For corporates, Design Thinking and Lean Startup aren’t enough.
The Lean Scaleup framework extends proven startup concepts into the enterprise context — with added structures for alignment, lifecycle governance, and integration with core operations.
It is built for the end-to-end process, not just validation.
The Lean Scaleup is a proprietary framework developed by Frank Mattes to bridge the gap between early innovation success and large-scale business impact in corporate settings.
The Lean Scaleup framework was developed by Frank Mattes.
He is a recognized thought leader in corporate innovation and collaborated with 100+ practitioners from global enterprises to develop that framework.
It’s featured in his book “NOW and NEW” and trusted by leading companies worldwide.
Frank Mattes is a senior corporate innovation expert with over 25 years of experience helping large corporations like Amadeus, Beiersdorf, bp, Evonik, Philips and Scania turn ideas into scalable, profitable businesses.
Unlike those methods, which focus mainly on ideation or validation, Lean Scaleup provides an end-to-end approach that integrates innovation with corporate strategy, governance, and operations to enable measurable growth.
It is built collaboratively with over 100 innovation practitioners and continuously refined to address real-world corporate innovation scaling pain points.
Lean Scaleup is a structured, end-to-end framework that helps large companies turn validated innovation concepts into real business impact.
Developed with 100+ corporate practitioners, it bridges the gap between innovation teams and core operations.
It enables new growth from within.
Lean Scaleup isn’t a theoretical model. It’s a modular, practical system of 12 building blocks — tailored to different corporate roles.
You only need a few modules per persona, but everything fits into one coherent system that drives execution, not just strategy decks.
You can start with a free Lean Scaleup Self-Assessment, book an expert consultation, or dive into the book “NOW and NEW.”
From there, workshops or custom projects can tailor the framework to your specific growth goals.