His work has influenced modern entrepreneurship through the creation of tools and processes for new ventures which differ from those used in large companies.

[16] Blank's first job in Silicon Valley was as an instructor in the training department of Electromagnetic Systems Laboratory (ESL), a unit of TRW.

[18] The company helped the government understand the Soviets' technological and arms developments during the Cold War.

[18] Blank co-founded his last startup, the customer relationship management (CRM) provider E.piphany, in 1996 and retired the day before its IPO in September 1999.

Rather than relying on the traditional business school practice of teaching students how to write a standard business plan, or simply build a product,[25] the Lean Launchpad course assumed that all the students have a series of untested hypotheses about a venture and need to get out of the classroom to validate them.

[26] In 2012 Blank collaborated with the National Science Foundation and Venturewell to create educator courses and training material for NSF and Lean LaunchPad Instructors.

)[29] In 2014, in conjunction with the National Institute of Health,[30] Blank took the UCSF curriculum and developed the I-Corps@NIH program.

[35] In 2020, Blank co-created the "Technology, Innovation and Modern War" class at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

[40] Blank co-created the Wicked Problems, Systems Dynamics, and Entrepreneurial Innovation class as a summer course at Imperial College in London in 2023.

Customer development starts with the insight that there are no facts inside your building so entrepreneurs need to get outside to find, test and validate them.

[48] In July 2011 the National Science Foundation (NSF) asked Blank to adapt his Lean LaunchPad class to help scientists who were applying for an SBIR grant learn how to commercialize their academic inventions.

The methodology is taught at 100 universities and has been employed to drive innovation within agencies of the United States government.

[57] The course has also been adopted by the U.S. Department of Defense and is offered through the National Security Innovation Network[58] as well as in Australia[59] and the UK.

[[68][69] Blank, along with Joe Felter and Raj Shah,[70] founded the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford University in 2021.

[71] Funded by the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR), the center connects defense, commercial, and academic organizations.

[10] In 2023 he was appointed to the United States Department of the Navy’s Science and Technology Advisory board, heading the Innovation Group.