Good question. This blog post started off life as a brief foundation of The Lean Startup principles, with the aim of giving everyone an idea of what I am talking about. As with most things in life the original thought grew arms and legs and it has caused me to re-assess my approach.
When I first read The Lean Startup book it wasn’t so much the individual steps that hooked me but rather the over riding philosophy.
This philosophy runs through three books at the core of the Lean Startup and is more than any one book or author:
- The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
- The Lean Startup by Eric Reis
- Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder
At this stage, rather than focus on the individual steps laid out in one book, I want to look at the common themes across the movement.
The one unifying theme among all proponents of the movement is to re-assess how we approach startups in the business world with the aim of increasing the success rate. We have all heard the statistics around the failure rate of new businesses the world over, clearly there is something wrong.
The one point that really hit home for me was the realisation that startups are not simply smaller versions of large corporations- often referred to as the dollhouse fallacy. Once we accept this we realise that the tools and procedures for measuring and monitoring the success of established corporations are not suitable for startups. The Lean Startup philosophy tackles this in an innovative way.
In the process of writing the post it became very apparent to me that while I have read The Lean Startup by Eric Reis I needed a better understanding of the wider process. This insight has prompted me to create and share a reading list to broaden my understanding and ensure that I have the right process in place for when the business launches. More on that to follow!
I am currently at the theoretical stage of starting the business and ultimately the real learning will happen when I start to implement the principles but it is imperative that I have a strong foundation to build on. I’d rather be spending my time doing this than a traditional business plan trying to guess my turnover in 1,3 and years.
I apologise if you were looking for a more comprehensive answer to the question of title but I promise that this approach will be much more beneficial in the long-run!
The journey continues….