The Promise of the Lean Startup

I'm honored to have a guest post on GigaOm to introduce the concept of the lean startup to their audience. It's the most general-purpose overview I've written so far, and although it was a lot less specific than my usual, I wanted to share it here, too. I'll share an excerpt and then I'd like to ask, once again, for your help.

Here's the excerpt:

Today’s high-tech entrepreneurs have at their command more than just the ability to invent new technologies — they have mastered the discipline and the methodology required to harness those technologies in order to serve customers. Such a combination of new technology and new understanding is unlocking new opportunities. In order to maximize such opportunities, this generation of entrepreneurs combines extremely low costs with faster cycle times to produce what I call lean startups.

[...]

The ultimate goal of a lean startup is to identify where its vision intersects with what reality can accommodate. It is neither a capitulation to “what customers think they want” nor a willful ignorance of conditions on the ground. It is a company built to learn.

As a consequence, this new startup is relentlessly metrics-driven. It tries out new ideas with a fraction of customers in order to prioritize using facts, not opinions. Its unit of progress is that of validated learning about its customers. Because this radical notion of progress is located firmly in the heads of its employees, and not in any artifacts they produce, the lean startup is employee-centric and knowledge-obsessed. It is a truly fun place to work.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

Read the rest of the article here...

I have written several guest posts for other blogs that I haven't cross-posted here, including for VentureBeat, O'Reilly Radar, and The Four Hour Workweek. When I do this in the future, should I cross-post or not? I would welcome your feedback in the comments.

Now for my request. I get asked regularly to do guest posts, and I'm quite often at a loss for topic ideas. I know the audience on this blog, and I've become comfortable writing in the long-form style I normally use here. I've struggled to come up with topics that work in the shorter-form world of traditional and news-oriented blogs. So, if you have a topic suggestion, please post it as a comment. Ideally it'd be something you think would be useful to a general business or tech audience and could be addressed in a short piece or possibly in a series.

Thanks again for your continued support. Your feedback means a lot to me, so keep it coming. I know I've had a lot of events-related posts lately, but I'm doing my best to keep it balanced with more substantive essays. Am I getting the mix right? Please let me know in the comments. Thank you.

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• The Promise of the Lean Startup (gigaom.com)