[9oliYQjP]

The jury is still out on whether Lean is a model that "works", that term being defined by most entrepreneurs as letting them succeed. I have absolutely no doubt that Lean works as a model for revealing "truth" as Eric Ries claims.

Here's the alarming thing that the book suggests: that we are all scientists trying to reveal market insights. Some of us manage to find out that our hypothesis was true and we are rewarded. Some of us disprove a hypothesis, which is a perfectly scientifically admirable thing to do, but we are penalized for it. 100 years from now, will people laugh at how our society was naive enough to let entrepreneurs who fail go personally bankrupt in some cases? Will they even consider revealing market truths to be failure? I'm guessing that 100 years from now we'll have reached a point where these things are true:

1. We won't see so many half-baked products get to market (e.g., Blackberry Playbook) because conventional wisdom by then will have prevented those kinds of products from getting as far along in the product development stage as they do now without having fundamental assumptions about them get validated earlier on.

2. There will be a market that rewards entrepreneurs for revealing insight into their "failures" because these failures provide truths about the market and are just as equally applicable as truths about the market that validate assumptions.

[jmathes]

Most. Startups. Fail.

If your startup operates on the assumption that your vision is flawless, you're not causing your vision to be less uncertain by refusing to notice the risk.

You're shooting the messenger. You've conflated trying to measure whether a strategy is flawed with causing it to be flawed. Pull your head out of the sand. It is not the fault of the book that people who have flawed ideas won't get rich without fixing their ideas.

[9oliYQjP]

I suppose I wasn't very clear, but what I was trying to say is that a lot of entrepreneurs are turning to Lean for a framework that will lead them to success. That's about as big of a misunderstanding as thinking being able to predict the weather will allow you to force a sunny day tomorrow. Eric Ries has never claimed to be able to do the latter, and I was just pointing that out. But right up there with misunderstanding #1 about Lean (i.e., "Lean means bootstrapped cheap right?") has got to be this particular misunderstanding.

What I meant by jury is still out, is that we might find that the framework suggested in The Lean Startup actually increases success rates amongst startups in addition to being a model for revealing truth. Revealing truth faster will allow startups to extend their runway and if we find that most successful businesses only require X pivots on average before they start to profitable, we very well might see startups be able to accomplish these X pivots succeed where they may have followed a more traditional launch and pray model and achieved fewer than X pivots, running out of runway.

If it sounds like I'm trying to be negative about the book, I'm not. It's fantastic and I'm absolutely suggesting everybody buy a copy :P

[amirmc]

> a lot of entrepreneurs are turning to Lean for a framework that will lead them to success ... But right up there with misunderstanding #1 about Lean ... has got to be this particular misunderstanding

I agree with what you're saying but when the strap line of the book is "How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Companies" [emphasis added] the misunderstanding is, well ... understandable.

[9oliYQjP]

You're right, it's on the cover. I have jumped right into the book but haven't read anywhere in there claims that Lean will cause success. It's pretty modest in the claims. I find it interesting that it's blatantly on the cover though. I'm not convinced this would let me succeed but I am convinced it would help me from driving off a cliff into a disaster of a situation where I have wasted a lot of time and effort on a product that it turns out the market doesn't want.

[jmathes]

The cover says "How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Companies". That means:

- There exist at least two entrepreneurs today - At least two of them use continuous innovation - At least two of those who use continuous innovation create radically successful companies - This book will tell you how they do it

[davidw]

> personally bankrupt in some cases

I think you're doing it wrong if that happens.