The Lean Startup - Eric Ries [116]
In addition to quarterly reports on profits and margins, companies on the LTSE would report using innovation accounting on their internal entrepreneurship efforts. Like Intuit, they would report on the revenue they were generating from products that did not exist a few years earlier. Executive compensation in LTSE companies would be tied to the company’s long-term performance. Trading on the LTSE would have much higher transaction costs and fees to minimize day trading and massive price swings. In exchange, LTSE companies would be allowed to structure their corporate governance to facilitate greater freedom for management to pursue long-term investments. In addition to support for long-term thinking, the transparency of the LTSE will provide valuable data about how to nurture innovation in the real world. Something like the LTSE would accelerate the creation of the next generation of great companies, built from the ground up for continuous innovation.
IN CONCLUSION
As a movement, the Lean Startup must avoid doctrines and rigid ideology. We must avoid the caricature that science means formula or a lack of humanity in work. In fact, science is one of humanity’s most creative pursuits. I believe that applying it to entrepreneurship will unlock a vast storehouse of human potential.
What would an organization look like if all of its employees were armed with Lean Startup organizational superpowers?
For one thing, everyone would insist that assumptions be stated explicitly and tested rigorously not as a stalling tactic or a form of make-work but out of a genuine desire to discover the truth that underlies every project’s vision.
We would not waste time on endless arguments between the defenders of quality and the cowboys of reckless advance; instead, we would recognize that speed and quality are allies in the pursuit of the customer’s long-term benefit. We would race to test our vision but not to abandon it. We would look to eliminate waste not to build quality castles in the sky but in the service of agility and breakthrough business results.
We would respond to failures and setbacks with honesty and learning, not with recriminations and blame. More than that, we would shun the impulse to slow down, increase batch size, and indulge in the curse of prevention. Instead, we would achieve speed by bypassing the excess work that does not lead to learning. We would dedicate ourselves to the creation of new institutions with a long-term mission to build sustainable value and change the world for the better.
Most of all, we would stop wasting people’s time.
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JOIN THE MOVEMENT
In the past few years, the Lean Startup movement has gone global. The number of resources available for aspiring entrepreneurs is incredible. Here, I’ll do my best to list just a few of the best events, books, and blogs for further reading and further practice. The rest is up to you. Reading is good, action is better.
The most important resources are local. Gone are the days where you had to be in Silicon Valley to find other entrepreneurs to share ideas and struggles with. However, being embedded in a startup ecosystem is still an important part of entrepreneurship. What’s changed is that these ecosystems are springing up in more and more startup hubs around the world.
I maintain an official website for The Lean Startup at http://theleanstartup.com, where you can find additional resources, including case studies and links to further reading. You will also find links there to my blog,