Steve Blank

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Apple Vision Pro – Tech in the Search of a Market

Steve Blank

A version of this article previously appeared in Fortune. If you haven’t been paying attention Apple has started shipping its Apple Vision Pro , its take on a headset that combines Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). The product is an amazing technical tour de force. But the product/market fit of this first iteration is a swing and a miss.

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The Secret History of Minnesota Part 1: Engineering Research Associates

Steve Blank

This post is the latest in the “ Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you watch the video or read some of the earlier posts for context. See the Secret History bibliography for sources and supplemental reading. No Knowledge of Computers Silicon Valley emerged from work in World War II led by Stanford professor Fred Terman developing microwave and electronics for Electronic Warfare systems.

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Profound Beliefs

Steve Blank

This post previously appeared in EIX. In the early stages of a startup your hypotheses about all the parts of your business model are your profound beliefs. Think of profound beliefs as “strong opinions loosely held.” You can’t be an effective founder or in the C-suite of a startup if you don’t hold any. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development.

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Lean Meets Wicked Problems

Steve Blank

This post previously appeared in Poets & Quants. I just spent a month and a half at Imperial College London co-teaching a “Wicked” Entrepreneurship class. In this case Wicked doesn’t mean morally evil, but refers to really complex problems, ones with multiple moving parts, where the solution isn’t obvious. (Understanding and solving homelessness, disinformation, climate change mitigation or an insurgency are examples of wicked problems.

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Be Where Your Business Is

Steve Blank

This post previously appeared on the readwrite blog. A CEO running a B-to-B startup in needs to live in the city where their business is – or else they’ll never scale. I was having breakfast with Erin, an ex-student, just off a red-eye flight from New York. She’s built a 65-person startup selling enterprise software to the financial services industry.

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Why The Pentagon Can’t Count: It’s Time to Reinvent the Audit

Steve Blank

This article previously appeared in War on the Rocks. In the past, headlines about the Pentagon failing its financial audit again would never have caught my attention. But having been in the middle of this conversation when I served on one of the Defense Department’s advisory boards, I understand why the Pentagon can’t count. The experience taught me a valuable lesson about innovation and imagination in large organizations, and the difference visionary leadership – or the lack of it –

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Mapping the Unknown – The Ten Steps to Map Any Industry

Steve Blank

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. L?ozi ??. I just had lunch with Shenwei, one of my ex-students who had just taken a job in a mid-sized consulting firm. After a bit of catching up I offered he was looking a bit lost. “I just got handed a project to help our firm enter a new industry – semiconductors. They want me to map out the space so we can figure out where we can add value.

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