Introducing Smart Startup: An Interview with Dr. Chengbin Wang

A couple of months ago I was introduced to Chengbin Wang, Professor of Entrepreneurship at Taizhou University. He is a leading Chinese educator and system innovator in the field of AI-driven startup validation. Over the years, Dr. Wang has published a number of papers related to entrepreneurship and innovation in highly respected peer-reviewed academic journals, and has been a leading proponent of the Lean Startup methodology in China.

He also leads the "Project + Coach" model at the Blue Bay startup incubator, and has worked with over a hundred startups across many industries. Since the emergence of LLMs and Generative AI, Dr. Wang has observed a change in the challenges facing startups and an opportunity to use AI as more than just a tool to accelerate the Lean Startup process. He has been leading a research project to codify this new approach and the early results will be published soon in an academic journal.

Over the course of my lifetime I have observed four waves of digital technology revolution. I call these waves:

• The microprocessor revolution
• The Internet revolution
• The mobile/social revolution
• The connected intelligence revolution

Each one has fundamentally changed:

• How we, as individuals, interact with the world around us,
• How business operate, and
• The nature of competition within industries (and even the definition of industries).

Dr. Wang has helped me realize that each of these revolutions also changed the way in which entrepreneurs bring new concepts to scale, with the most significant change coming as a result of the Internet revolution (leading to Lean Startup). Chengbin and I believe that the connected intelligence revolution is having the same level of impact and we are working together to define, test, refine, and communicate this new approach, which we are calling "Smart Startup".

We are launching this new newsletter to share our observations, our thoughts, and our learnings with you. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions or feedback.

I thought it would be most helpful to kick-off the newsletter with an interview with Dr. Wang.

Russ: How long have you been teaching entrepreneurship, and what other roles do you play in the startup ecosystem in China?

Chengbin: I began teaching Entrepreneurship Practicum in 2012, long before most Chinese universities had formal entrepreneurship curricula. I designed an open-class model where students with an idea could develop it through one week of structured exploration. At the time, I searched for a suitable teaching platform, but most Chinese tools were simulation-based (company registration, operations) and completely disconnected from real idea clarification and validation.

So I wrote my own teaching materials and in 2018 completed the manuscript Entrepreneurship Fundamentals: A Lean Startup Approach, which was published in 2019 by China Higher Education Press. It was co-developed with local entrepreneurs through an iterative, open-teaching model.

Later, I led a crowdfunding initiative across five universities to develop a “Lean Business Canvas” software tool. The initial developer (a partner of UFIDA) struggled with cross-platform integration, and the project fell short. During a separate commercial experiment on “Social Sales,” I met a new developer (Mr. Pan), who rebuilt the tool from scratch in two months. After a year of refinement, we launched a working version that could support real student startups.

We founded the Taizhou Good Projects Empowerment Center to support real-world incubation and gradually moved the canvas tool into social deployment. However, we faced a major bottleneck: most entrepreneurs lacked the cognitive scaffolding to formulate and validate hypotheses.

That changed in late 2024, when Tencent released the iMA Knowledge Base, a generative knowledge system. In early 2025, I launched a collaboration with Blue Bay Group, integrating iMA with our lean canvas software in a real incubation experiment. This became the prototype of our Smart Startup five-step model, built on human-AI collaboration.

Russ: What is entrepreneurship? What do entrepreneurs do?

Chengbin: Entrepreneurship is a way for individuals to realize their deeper aspirations and goals. But beyond motivation and inspiration, what truly matters is cognitive capacity and structural thinking. In China, most entrepreneurs lack access to structured methodologies and operate based on instinct. For tech startups, even after solving R&D problems, commercial validation remains a massive challenge.

I fully agree with Fitzgerald, Wankerl, and Schramm (2010): innovation consists of idea, market, and execution. The latter two are the domain of scientific entrepreneurship. That’s why I advocate for cognitively structured entrepreneurship—not just passion-driven but built on system logic.

Russ: You have been a strong proponent of the Lean Startup method in China. You and I have talked about how the Internet revolution 25 years ago brought both opportunities and pressures that changed how entrepreneurs build new ventures. How did that transformation shape the Lean Startup movement?

Chengbin: My initial adoption of lean startup methods came from a teaching need, but their deeper impact became clear in the AI era.

Before iMA, I had accumulated years of SSCI papers, case materials, and popular entrepreneurship books—but they were fragmented and difficult to deploy in real time. Each time I needed to prepare a lesson or write something, it took a week of reprocessing.

With iMA and DeepSeek integration, I now access structured knowledge in real-time, customized to each project’s needs. This fundamentally changed my teaching logic.

At Blue Bay, I implemented a Project + Coach model: every student must lead a real project, build hypotheses, and validate through feedback. I coach based on their feedback loops, not fixed lectures. We record our sessions via Tencent Meetings and use university platforms to close the loop within five minutes—what I call a “5-minute cognitive feedback system.” This has proven much more effective than traditional lectures.

Russ: You’ve seen firsthand how tools like cloud computing, IoT, big data, and cognitive platforms - what I call the Connected Intelligence revolution - are changing startup behavior today. Are these technologies just tools for accelerating Lean Startup, or are they driving a deeper shift - a new paradigm, like the Internet once did?

Chengbin: From my experience, AI and cognitive platforms are not just accelerators—they are paradigm changers. Tools like iMA combine generative AI with task-based cognition and platform integration, enabling structure, context, and learning in real time.

Our lean canvas tool works well for visualizing assumptions, but lacks knowledge support. So I currently use Word + ChatGPT for interactive generation, but face two issues: weak continuity and inconsistent quality from public data. ChatGPT, for instance, repeats mainstream interpretations (e.g., “Build-Measure-Learn”), which limits its ability to challenge or restructure entrepreneurial cognition.

That’s why we need specialized, proprietary knowledge bases like iMA, embedded in entrepreneurial tasks—not just AI access.

Russ: When you and I were first introduced I was struck by two things. First, the potential impact of your research. Second was how often you used the word “cognitive”. The name “Smart Startup” seemed like a perfect name for your new approach. What do you mean when you say that entrepreneurship itself is undergoing a “cognitive transformation”?

Chengbin: Cognitive transformation refers to how entrepreneurs perceive problems, construct hypotheses, and interpret feedback. In today’s environment, experience is no longer sufficient. Entrepreneurs need cognitive infrastructure to act under absolute uncertainty.

In one Blue Bay experiment, our AI system flagged a shift from SaaS to RaaS (Result-as-a-Service), which led to a complete revision of the company’s mission and vision. Without AI, this strategic pivot would never have happened.

This is why I now emphasize the Coach-AI-Entrepreneur triad. AI provides content and structural suggestions. Coaches provide judgment and pacing. Entrepreneurs drive execution and learning. This triadic system is the cognitive backbone of Smart Startup.

Russ: Can you define what you mean by “Smart Startup”? What makes it different from previous approaches?

Chengbin: I define Smart Startup = Cognition (Know) + Tools (Use) + Validation (Act) = AI × Lean Startup.

It is a five-step system:

1. Belief Clarification
2. Hypothesis Generation
3. Experimental Validation
4. Strategic Transformation
5. Model Formation

Each step integrates platform tools, AI systems, and human coaching, producing a structured, verifiable, and adaptive path. It differs from previous models by moving beyond founder-centric or tool-centric approaches. Instead, it emphasizes collaborative cognition, embedded platforms, and continuous learning.

Russ: You’ve approached Smart Startup itself like a startup — identifying a need, forming hypotheses, and testing solutions. What are some practical ways you’re bringing Smart Startup to life? And what are you learning from the entrepreneurs using it?

Chengbin: We are implementing Smart Startup as a live incubation experiment. Using the iMA Knowledge Base for knowledge navigation, the Lean Canvas tool for task structuring, AI for content generation, and coaching for judgment pacing, we’ve formed a complete operational loop.

We’ve applied this system in university incubators, startup classrooms, and corporate innovation programs. The key insight: entrepreneurs do not lack ideas—they lack cognitive structure and feedback mechanisms. Smart Startup gives them visibility into assumptions, helps them iterate paths, and eventually builds a reusable learning system.

Russ: Thank you Chengbin for your time in answering these questions. I am very excited about our work together on Smart Startup.