The Lean Startup

How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

By: Eric Ries

Narrated by: Eric Ries

Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean 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 conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.

The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both 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 counter-intuitive practices that shorten product-development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.

Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - 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 successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

©2011 Eric Ries (P)2011 Random House

Critic reviews

"Eric has created a science where previously there was only art. A must read for every serious entrepreneur—and every manager interested in innovation." (Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Opsware Inc., and Netscape)

"At Asana, we've been lucky to benefit from Eric's advice firsthand; this book will enable him to help many more entrepreneurs answer the tough questions about their business." (Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana)

"In business, a ‘lean’ enterprise is sustainable efficiency in action. Eric Ries’ 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 something great!” (Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Entrepreneur.)

Very good

Sometimes a bit prolix but basically very, very good. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the business of software.

For all managers

Learned something I can take back to my property claims supervisor role that is rigid by nature. Was initially intimidated this wouldnt apply. certainly more applicable in startup environment, but aspects still useful and applicable for my career now.

Clean and Concise, Logical and Informative

I listened to this book at the recommendation of a friend after pitching her my New Business concept. The way in which Eric lays out the approaches, and then immediately shares anecdotes, makes it easy to understand the discussion points.
I have found like-minded thinking and am thrilled to continue my outreach to the Lean Startup community.
Thank you for the experience.

Great! Now I understand LEAN!

So many talks wrongly speaking about LEAN, finally I understand it as it philosophy and techniques.

The book is very practical and very well structured. It bring you from intuitive cases to more complex situation, applying new concepts as it advances. It finish with a philosophical chapter where it gives existencial meaning to LEAN as methodology.

it changed my way of thinking of a startup..

it changed my way of thinking of a startup.. clear and engaging presentation with actionable ideas not just theory....

A lot of solid information condensed

Not the type of information everyone will find valuable. Personally I learned a lot, and I will definitely use it during our app development cycle.

The audible version do cause Nerocognitive Overload as a lot of information is tightly compressed into a couple of hours.

Having both the book and audio version surely helped with the lists, diagrams and graphical content.

I recommend this book as essential for developers and digital entrepreneurs.

Informative, slightly redundant

Despite the author repeating himself multiple times, I learned a LOT. I understand that repetition can greatly assist in retaining knowledge, but I feel as though the book could have been shortened a bit. Overall, I am still definitely glad I gave it a listen, and would recommend it to everyone (regardless of their position in business or life).

Great Book!

The book opened my mind to small batch for design and product development. I will be implementing this methodology on my next project!

Filling in startup lingo

As a engineer this book has filled in the missing holes I need to perform better at my job. The history lessons alone and all the theory learned from Toyota is priceless. I look forward to value learning and ignoring vanity metrics. Audio book wise this was my first audio book and it was great experience. Yes I found my self clicking the 30 sec back a few times but that was because of train conductor distractions. This allowed me to get through this book in about 5 hours at an avg of 2x speed. I think that’s useful.

A good model for creative business thinking

This book is valuable even if you are not starting a new company.The principals of developing minimally viable ideas and sending them out in a series of rolling experiments is a fantastic model for trying new things and avoiding analysis paralysis that keeps many of us on the fence dreaming and plotting but never seeing our best ideas happen