The Lean Entrepreneur: How Visionaries Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets

And Cue the Lean Startup

Whether you are a startup or a big business trying to revitalize growth or save your business or protect against the future; whether you are high-tech, low-tech, or somewhere in between; whether you are business-to-business, business-to-consumer, or business-to-business-to-consumer, you are at the mercy of the value-creation economy.

To succeed, grow, thrive, you must be focused on creating real value for known customers. You must be fast, agile, quick thinking, and quick acting. You must not only continuously improve your output; you must continuously improve the process of outputting. You must be a leader and a fast follower. You must be like a basketball point guard defending your counterpart, anticipating moves, and reacting fast. You must be the mirror image of a butterfly, mimic an octopus, be your customer’s shadow.

You must be able to innovate sustainably and disruptively.

Clearly, this is no small task. The methods and processes differ greatly at opposite ends of the spectrum. Although lean startup principles can be applied across the spectrum, they are geared toward entrepreneurial endeavors tending toward the disruptive side. Most how-to business writing, academic research, and business school instruction tends toward the sustaining side.

The lean startup is a method developed by Eric Ries to increase the success of entrepreneurial endeavors wherever they might be attempted, but that is focused primarily on the disruptive side. Ries describes ...