The Four Steps to the Epiphany

Bibliography

Entrepreneurial Management Stack

Over the last few years we've discovered that startups are not smaller versions of large companies. The skills founders need are not covered by traditional books for MBAs and large company managers. There are now a few books that specifically address founders’ needs. Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Generation is the first book that allows you to answer “What's your business model?” intelligently and with precision. Make sure this one is on your shelf.

Eric Ries was the best student I ever had. He took the Customer Development process, combined it with Agile Engineering, and actually did the first implementation in a startup. His insights about the combined Customer Development/Agile process and its implications past startups into large corporations is a sea change in thinking. His book, The Lean Startup, is a “must-have” for your shelf.

It's impossible to implement any of this if you don't understand Agile Development. Extreme Programming Explained by one of the pioneers of Agile, Kent Beck, is a great tutorial. If you don't understand Values, Principles and Practices in XP it makes Customer Development almost impossible.

If you're in a large company, the other side of innovation makes sense of how to insert innovation into an execution organization. If you're starting a medical device company Biodesign: The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies is a must-have. It has a great customer discovery process.

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