The connection between a big corporation and a tiny startup may be difficult to imagine, unless you are tired of meetings and projects that takes years to roll out. Or, you have read the famous The Lean Startup book, by Eric Ries. Now a “cult book” among digital entrepreneurs, in this past year it gained popularity in a number of different environments, enterprises included. Not incidentally: many of the case studies presented are related to big companies, showing how to gain effectiveness and productivity while reducing time-to-market and costs. And, yes, doing less meetings has something to do with this, but there is more.
“Lean” as in “Toyota”. In his book Mr. Ries does two interesting yet unusual connections. The first is applying Toyota’s Lean Production (Wikipedia) model to the managing process of a startup daily life. The original idea is to constantly review your production process, in order to optimize it to the limit. This is pretty usual in software, when you can “hotfix” your product nearly immediately. And that is the known part. The interesting one is to take a process from industrial manufacturing, mix it up with the software development habits and finish with a new methodology for building startups. Or, for managing in a better way the process of releasing new products also in big companies.
“Learn” as the new “Business“. The other theoretical jump made by the book is switching the startup’s life mission from creating revenue, or doing a business whatsoever, to… learning. The most famous quote of the book, in fact, is:
A startup is first of all an experiment. It is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. At its heart, a startup is a catalyst that transforms ideas into products.
Every single day, or single moment, of a startup’s activity is iterating – it’s a special word – the cycle of build – measure – test – analyze and so on, in order to understand if the product is the right one, if the customers are actually there, etcetera. And this must be done at a fast pace, because resources are scarce and the original idea behind the startup must be proven in the minimum time possible.
At the end, a Lean Startup is an organization that develops an unknown products in an unknown market, towards unknown customers. In this time of economic uncertainty, isn’t this a perfect description of a big corporation, too?
Eric Ries is in San Francisco on Dec. 3rd and 4th for the first Lean Startup Conference, that has been fully booked. Have a look to the streaming facilities for eventual connection.
