The part I find humorous is constantly redefining terms. I thought "lean" referred to budgets. In that light, I would have refuted the headline's premise with a reminder that the 'outer' company was footing the bill for salaries.
No, what they're discussing is yet another methodology (or an existing one with a tweak, requiring a new name...) for creating a product, getting it to [a subset of] customers, and refining it.