Steve Blank

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Why Companies and Government Do “Innovation Theater” Instead of Actual Innovation

Steve Blank

These processes reduce risk to an overall organization, but each layer of process reduces the ability to be agile and lean and – most importantly – responsive to new opportunities and threats. Metrics are used to manage process rather than creation of new capabilities, outcomes and speed to deployment.

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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. Almost overnight the floodgates opened, and risk capital was available at scale from venture capital investors who rushed their startups toward public offerings.

Lean 335
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Why Some Startups Win

Steve Blank

It dawned on me that we had a department full of people with titles describing process-centric execution while we were in environment that required relentless agility and speed with urgency. But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. I couldn’t care less about those.

Startup 310
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ESADE Business School Commencement Speech

Steve Blank

Metrics like Return on Net Assets, Return on Capital and Internal Rate of Return are the guiding stars of the board and CEO. As Harvard professor Clayton Christensen noted, these efficiency metrics provided wise guidance for times when capital was scarce and raising money was hard. Act Like a Startup. And if you do you are in luck.

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

Steve Blank

The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today. It taught lean theory ( business model design , customer development and agile engineering) and practice. Seeing Is Believing. The Business Plan is Dead.

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The Class That Changed the Way Entrepreneurship is Taught

Steve Blank

With Lean LaunchPad, we were going to toss teaching the business plan aside and try to teach students a completely new, hands-on approach to starting companies – one which combines customer development, agile development, business models and pivots. Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering).

Lean 433
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Building a Company with Customer Data – Why Metrics Are Not Enough

Steve Blank

Web startups are at real disadvantage here as founders may confuse web metrics, A/B testing and on-line surveys as the entirety of first-hand knowledge – for most web business models they are not. Metrics tell you that something is happening. Of course you need to collect metrics, do A/B testing and run online surveys.

Metrics 239