The Lean Startup Newsletter - December 3, 2014

The Lean Startup Newsletter - December 3, 2014 by Eric Ries

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12/3/2014

Over the last few years, I’ve had the chance to work closely with a number of organizations that have been big for decades, as well as those who started small but, after experiencing initial growth, found themselves scrambling to introduce managerial structure to a startup culture.And so I enjoyed Nicholas Lemann’s recent New Yorker piece comparing How Google Works, a new book from Google's CEO Eric Schmidt and former head of product development Jonathan Rosenberg, to Alfred Sloan’s classic My Years with General Motors. Lemann not only discussed the rise in popularity of the corporate tome but also gave a brief history of the origins of the siloed organization that serves as a reminder that a commitment to iteration isn't just about product development; it's also about the way teams are organized and rewarded:“The company is an inescapably ever larger, ever more established, ever more heavily regulated organization whose management is now middle-aged. Google may be able to navigate this phase more adeptly than have some of its older Silicon Valley neighbors, like H.P. and Yahoo, but it won’t be by studying its own playbook.”

“In a startup situation, everything you do is an experiment, whether you admit it or not”

Speaking of business books, I was interviewed by Jason Saltzman of Entrepreneur, and spoke a little about the history and evolution of the Lean Startup, how my initial ideas on the topic eventually became a book, and a few common misconceptions about the methodology.

“A product development strike force"GE Canada reports on how the company’s FastWorks initiative, which was developed after my years of working closely with many GE teams and training thousands of top executives in the Lean Startup method, is helping teams who build large liquid natural gas plants work with customers in Saskatchewan’s oil sands. “Traditionally, a team might begin by looking at potential sites and preliminary engineering plans, taking the customer down the road toward building the new plant before it’s even certain that it will be needed and commercially successful. This runs up a great deal of time and cost… A FastWorks analysis might begin instead with a simple spreadsheet, asking if it’s worth building this particular plant in the first place.”See more than 120 speakers and mentors at the 2014 Lean Startup ConferenceWhether you’re still thinking about attending the 2014 Lean Startup Conference or already have your ticket and would like to know more about our speakers and mentors, Lisa Regan’s guest post at my blog offers a great run-down of the week ahead, as well as links to purchase tickets and learn more. 

Cheers,Eric

Eric Rieshttps://twitter.com/ericrieshttp://www.startuplessonslearned.com