The Lean Canvas#
There's a new Lean Canvas in the sidebar, under Strategy & Tools (the group that used to read Crew Tools). It's the nine-block canvas: Problem, Customer segments, Unique value proposition, Solution, Channels, Revenue streams, Cost structure, Key metrics and Unfair advantage, laid out in the standard arrangement on a wide screen and stacked in reading order below that.
It isn't part of EOS®. It's a business-model planning tool that happens to live next to the ones that are, and the page says so.
- Every block asks a question instead of sitting empty: *What are the main problems this customer is trying to solve?*, *How will the right customers find and buy this?*, and so on. Three blocks carry a second field underneath: Existing alternatives under Problem, Early adopters under Customer segments, and High-level concept under the value proposition.
- Expand any block to a full sheet when a box gets tight. It's the same text either way, just more room to think in.
- It saves as you type. The header shows Saving, Saved, or Unsaved changes, plus who saved last and when. If someone else saved over your version while you were writing, Runway keeps your draft and offers *Discard my draft and load the latest*; it never quietly overwrites either side.
- Keep as many canvases as you need. Name one on creation, then rename, duplicate, or archive it from the actions menu. An archived canvas stays readable and goes read-only until it's restored.
- Private canvases are for a model that isn't ready to share. Tick *Only you will be able to open, edit, or print this canvas* when creating it, or switch an existing one either way later. Private means private: not your fellow admins, not the account owner.
- Print gives you two layouts: Canvas, the grid on one sheet for a wall or a workshop table, and Detailed, one block per section when the writing is longer than a box. Printing uses the saved version, so give it a second if you're mid-sentence.
- Admins edit, everyone reads. Shared canvases are visible to the whole organization; creating and changing them is an admin job.
Turning a block into work#
A canvas that nobody acts on is a poster. Each block has a Link button that connects it to real work on a crew's list:
- New to-do or New issue creates the item on the crew you pick, with the owner, due date and priority you'd set anywhere else, and links it to the block in one step.
- Existing work searches a crew's to-dos or issues and links what's already there. Filter by open work, done or archived work, or all of it.
- Linked items show as chips on the block with their type, title and current status (Not done, Done, Open, Resolved, and so on). Click one to open it where it lives, on To-Dos or Land the Plane.
- Removing a link removes the link. The to-do or issue itself is untouched.
Links respect the same access rules as the items behind them, so a chip only shows what the person looking at the canvas can already see.
Before it works: three migrations#
Lean Canvas is entirely database-backed, with no browser-local fallback. An administrator needs to apply these in the Supabase SQL editor, in this order:
1. Database Scripts/add_lean_canvases.sql 2. Database Scripts/add_lean_canvas_private.sql 3. Database Scripts/add_lean_canvas_links.sql
Until they're applied, the page says which one is missing rather than failing quietly. If the links script was already applied before the private one, re-run it; it's idempotent.
Questions, or something not behaving? Get in touch for beta feedback; it goes straight to us.