Remove 2010 Remove Engineer Remove Product Development Remove Silicon Valley
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The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

Steve Blank

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

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Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores.

Steve Blank

Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.) They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. Their engineers hated us.

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Blowing up the Business Plan at U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School

Steve Blank

During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, science and engineering at both Stanford and U.C. Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. At the same time Berkeley was also developing Cold War weapons systems. However its focus was nuclear weapons – not something you wanted to be spinning out. Today the U.C.

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Out of the Ashes - Something Isn't Quite Right

Steve Blank

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. Would you mind sharing them? Order Here.

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Vertical Markets 2: Customer/Market Risk versus Invention Risk.

Steve Blank

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. Order Here. Now In Print!

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He's Only in Field Service

Steve Blank

Look for some “ skunk works &# project where the product developers are actively seeking alternatives to their own engineering organization. In Apple’s case Burrell Smith was designing a computer in a skunk works unbeknownst to the rest of Apple’s engineering. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

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Building a new startup hub

Startup Lessons Learned

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community. And do your customer development.