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How Today's Entrepreneurs Use
Continuous Innovation to Create
Radically Successful Businesses
$26.00
(Canada: $30.00)
Moststartups fail. Butmany of those failures
are preventable. TheLean Startup is a new
approach being adopted across the globe,
changing the way companies are built and
new products are launched.
Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization
dedicated to creating something new under condi
tions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true
for one person in a garage as it is in a group of
seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 board
room. What they all have in common is a mission
to penetrate the fog of uncertainty to discover a
successful path to a sustainable business.
The Lean Startup approach fosters com
panies that are more capital efficient and that
leverage human creativity more effectively.
Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing,
it relies on "validated learning," rapid scientific
experimentation, as well as a number of coun
terintuitive practices that shorten product
development cycles, measure actual progress
without resorting to vanity metrics, and help
us learn what customers really want. It enables
a company to shift directions with agility, alter
ing plans inch by inch, minute by minute.
Rather than wasting time creating elaborate
business plans, TheLeanStartup offers entrepre
neurs—in companies of all sizes—a way to test
their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust
before it's too late. Ries provides a scientific
approach to creating and managing success
ful startups in an age when companies need to
innovate more than ever.
Acclaim for THE LEAN STARTUP
"The Lean Startup isn't justabout how to create a more success
ful entrepreneurial business; its about what we can learn from
those businesses to improve virtually everything we do. I imag
ine Lean Startup principles applied to government programs,
to health care, and to solving the worlds great problems. Its
ultimately an answer to the question How can we learn more
quickly whatworks and discard what doesn't?"
—Tim O'Reilly, CEO, O'Reilly Media
"Eric Ries unravels the mysteries of entrepreneurship and re
veals that magic and genius are not the necessary ingredients
for success but instead proposes a scientific process that can be
learned and replicated. Whetheryou are a startup entrepreneur
or corporate entrepreneur, there are important lessons here for
you on your quest toward the new and unknown."
—Tim Brown, CEO, IDEO
"The road map for innovation for the twenty-first century. The
ideas in The Lean Startup will help create the next industrial
revolution."
—Steve Blank, lecturer, Stanford University,
UC Berkeley Haas Business School
"Every founding team should stop for forty-eight hours and
read The Lean Startup. Seriously, stop and read this book now."
—Scott Case, CEO, Startup America Partnership
"The key lesson of this book is that startups happen in the
present—that messy place between the past and the future
where nothing happens according to PowerPoint. Ries's 'read
and react' approach to this sport, his relentless focus on vali
dated learning, the never-ending anxiety of hovering between
persevere' and pivot,' all bear witness tohis appreciation for the
dynamics ofentrepreneurship."
—Geoffrey Moore, author, Crossing the Chasm
"Ifyou are an entrepreneur, read this book. Ifyou are thinking
about becoming an entrepreneur, read this book. Ifyou are just
curious about entrepreneurship, read this book. Starting Lean is
today's best practice for innovators. Doyourselfa favor andread
this book."
—Randy Komisar, founding director ofTiVo and
author ofthe bestselling The Monk and theRiddle
"How do you apply the fifty-year-old ideas of Lean to the fast-
paced, high-uncertainty world of startups? This book provides
a brilliant, well-documented, and practical answer. It is sure to
become a management classic."
—Don Reinertsen, author,
The Principles ofProduct Development Flow
"What would happen if businesses were built from the ground
up tolearn what their customers really wanted? The Lean Startup
is the foundation for reimagining almost everything about how
work works. Don't lettheword startup in the title confuse you.
This is a cookbook for entrepreneurs in organizations of all
sizes."
—Roy Bahat, president, IGN Entertainment
uThe Lean Startup is a foundational must-read for founders,
enabling them to reduce product failures by bringing structure
and science to what is usually informal and an art. It provides
actionable ways to avoid product-learning mistakes, rigorously
evaluate early signals from the market through validated learn
ing, and decide whether to persevere or to pivot, all challenges
that heighten thechance ofentrepreneurial failure."
—Noam Wasserman, professor, Harvard Business School
"One of the best and most insightful new books on entrepre
neurship and management I've ever read. Should be required
reading not only for the entrepreneurs that I work with, but
for my friends and colleagues in various industries who have
inevitably grappled with many of the challenges that The Lean
Startup addresses."
—Eugene J. Huang, partner, True NorthVenture Partners
"Every entrepreneur responsible for innovation within their
organization should read this book. It entertainingly and me
ticulously develops a rigorous science forthe innovation process
through themethodology of"lean thinking." This methodology
provides novel andpowerful tools for companies to improve the
speed and efficiency oftheir innovation processes through mini
mum viable products, validated learning, innovation account
ing, and actionable metrics. These tools will help organizations
large and small to sustain innovation by effectively leveraging
the time, passion, and skill of theirtalentpools."
—Andrea Goldsmith, professor of electricalengineering
at Stanford University and cofounder of several startups
"In business, a 'lean' enterprise is sustainable efficiency in ac
tion. Eric Ries's revolutionary Lean Startup method will help
bring your new business idea to an end result that is successful
and sustainable. You'll find innovative steps and strategies for
creating and managing your own startup while learning from
the real-life successes and collapses of others. This book is a
must-read for entrepreneurs who are truly ready to start some
thing great!"
—Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager®
and The One Minute Entrepreneur
"Business is too important to be left toluck. Eric reveals the rig
orous process that trumps luck in theinvention ofnew products
and new businesses. We've made this acenterpiece ofhow teams
work in my company... it works! This book is the guided tour
of the key innovative practices used inside Google, Toyota, and
Facebook that workin anybusiness."
—Scott Cook, founder and chairman of
the Executive Committee, Intuit
The
LEAN
STARTUP
The
LEAN
STARTUP
How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation
to Create Radically Successful Businesses
Eric Ries
CROWN
BUSINESS
NEW YORK