The book Lean Startup by Eric Ries has transformed entrepreneurship and innovation.
Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, learns from the failures and successes of the startups. He extracts the fundamental principles that enable startups to succeed. By naming them and codifying them, their principles become tangible, comprehensible and transmissible.
Specifically, the Lean Startup explains how to think of its product with the minimum of functionality to avoid constructing an unnecessary product, and how, starting from this point of departure, iterates quickly: that is to construct and test new functionalities to understand what customers really use.
Lean Startup transposes the concepts of lean management to the context of extreme uncertainty in which a startup is found. In a process of innovation, where is waste? How to make continuous improvement and be sure that one focuses its efforts on creating value for the customer? The Lean Startup takes its meaning when you try to find out what you need to build to meet the needs of your customers.
For entrepreneurs, the Lean Startup is a scientific approach and practical tools to develop their project.
For product and marketing managers of large companies, the Lean Startup allows to design and test new offers, with concrete data from the field.
In his book, Eric exemplifies his principles by personally experienced examples, but also by other companies in Silicon Valley.
This book has now become a reference; at the origin of a real movement of background in the world of business. The Lean Startup approach has transformed several companies by making them faster, agile and customer-centric, such as General Electric through its FastWorks program.
Eric Ries enters the Top Thinker 50 in 2015 alongside Michael Porter and Clayton Christensen.