The lean startup is a lie…
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: senior management realizes their company’s growth and innovation is stagnant. This realization sends shivers down their spine and results in sleepless nights. Something must be done to jumpstart growth.
You can test this hypothesis by looking at the number of innovation related business books published each decade. Jump on Google and quickly discover The Lean Startup positioned in the results for “best books for business innovation.”
Translated into thirty languages. A million copies sold. A vague memory of a colleague recommending the book. All the social proof necessary one might need to purchase their very own copy. Page after page the secrets behind the most successful startups spill out: minimum viable products, continuous deployment, split testing, actionable metrics, pivot, and the virtuous cycle of build, measure, learn.
The ideas are powerful, but the narrative is false. Even Mr. Ries hints at this.
“There is a mythmaking industry hard at work to sell us that story, but I have come to believe that the story is false, the product of selection bias and after-the-fact rationalization. ” — Eric Ries, The Lean…
