The Lean Startup

Most new ventures fail, and Eric Ries argues that a good share of those failures could have been avoided. The Lean Startup lays out a method for building companies and launching products that has since spread to businesses around the world. Its starting point is a broad definition: a startup is any organization trying to create something new when the outcome is very hard to predict. By that measure, a lone founder working in a garage and a team of veteran executives inside a Fortune 500 company face the same basic challenge, which is finding a route to a sustainable business through a great deal of uncertainty.

Ries draws on ideas from lean manufacturing to build his approach around what he calls validated learning. Instead of committing to a detailed plan and hoping it holds up, teams run quick, scientific experiments to find out what customers actually want. Several of his recommendations run against conventional business instinct. They aim to shorten the time it takes to develop a product and to track real progress rather than flattering vanity metrics. They also let a company change course quickly, adjusting its plans in small steps instead of waiting for a crisis.

The book is aimed at entrepreneurs in organizations of every size. Rather than spending months on an elaborate business plan, readers are shown how to keep testing their vision, then adapt it while there is still time. Ries presents this as a more capital-efficient way to work that also makes better use of people's creativity, and as a practical answer for an era in which companies have to innovate constantly.