The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses is an entrepreneurial and business book written by Eric Ries and published by Currency in 2011. The book prescribes an entrepreneurial approach that uses the scientific method to gather quantitative data on product development, marketing, and business strategy. The book emphasizes themes of lean manufacturing and thinking, traditional management versus disruptive innovation, and the scientific method. Ries promises readers that the Lean Startup method will reduce waste, generate innovation, and enable growth in companies across different industries and economic sectors.

Ries is also the author of the popular blog, Startup Lessons Learned, and the book, The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth, published by Currency in 2017. Ries is a frequent speaker at business events and conferences and an advisor to startups, venture capital firms, and corporations.

This study guide is based on the 2014 edition of The Lean Startup that includes a foreword by Jeff Immelt.

Summary

The book consists of three parts, and each part consists of four chapters. Each part is named for a stage of a startup’s development: “Vision,” “Steer,” and “Accelerate.”

Part 1, “Vision,” consists of four chapters, titled “Start,” “Define,” “Learn,” and “Experiment.” Part 1 concentrates on the initial stages of a startup, which requires a clear vision, an openness to learning (and failing), and the drive to experiment. “Start” conflates the practice of management to entrepreneurship. Both these business strategies require each other to foster growth and sustainability in companies. “Define” explains the identity and purpose of an entrepreneur and a startup, both of which require the motivation and courage to experiment with ideas, products, and strategy using the scientific method. “Learn” explicates how the scientific method can be used to rigorously test assumptions and eliminate waste from product development. Finally, “Experiment” defines how startups can test their assumptions about products and customer behavior.

Part 2, “Steer,” consists of four chapters, titled “Leap,” “Test,” “Measure,” and “Pivot (or Persevere).” “Leap” introduces the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop, a theory and practice of entrepreneurial management that relies on “validated learning” to confirm leap-of-faith assumptions about products and customers. “Test” explains how startups can use the scientific method to test assumptions, eliminate waste and innovate within product development and marketing. “Measure” describes the “pivot or persevere” approach to experimentation, which uses quantitative data on value metrics to determine whether a startup is growing or stagnating. “Pivot (or Persevere)” advises readers on how to react and adjust business strategies after accurately measuring the growth or stagnation of the company.

Part 3, “Accelerate,” consists of four chapters, titled “Batch,” “Grow,” “Adapt,” and “Innovate.” “Batch” presents the concept of small-batch product development, a method of manufacturing derived from Toyota. “Grow” addresses how startups can use small batches to measure engines of growth throughout product development, marketing, and sales operations. “Adapt” refers to how startups can become “adaptive organizations” using validated learning to test small batches of products and then analyzing the data for appropriate pivots. “Innovate” concludes the book by offering entrepreneurs strategies for innovation after a startup has achieved initial success.

Throughout the book, Ries draws on the principles of lean manufacturing and management science to create a new philosophy of startup entrepreneurship that embraces speed, agility, and experimentation to foster sustainable growth.