The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

　　新創事業是推動世界變化的主要因素之一，Google、Facebook、twitter這些最初兩三人組成的公司，改變了全世界的生活方式。統計上來看，絕大多數的初創事業都是失敗的，只有少數人、少數夢想能夠成真。

　　本書作者仔細提出全然不同傳統思維的「精實創業」方法，希望讓每個有好主意、好技術的人都能走向成功之路。這套方法在短時間內在全世界獲得熱烈迴響，美國商業雜誌Portfolio選為2011年最重要的觀念。

　　::為何需要「精實創業」？

　　過去我們都認為，產品開發就是要一套完整的商業計畫。「精實創業」認為，開飛機或許需要厚重的使用指南，但開車到某個目的地，幹嘛把如何使用駕駛盤寫成一本手冊？面對每一秒都在變化的現代環境，「完美」的商業計畫只是浪費時間，我們應該開車就走，到路口再調整方向。這樣，大幅縮短產品修改更新的時間週期，就是「精實創業」的核心精神。

　　::「精實創業」的關鍵概念？

　　最小可行產品（MVP）：產品或服務不要等到「完美」才推出，只要服務堪用就應該讓消費者使用。當初dropbox的第一版產品只不過是一段影片說明，就可以聽到眾多使用者的迴響。當初google只能搜尋專業技術網站，但使用者都已經知道她的優點。

　　軸轉（Pivot）：快速推出產品、快速更新，可以讓我們真的知道產品是否讓大家滿意，一旦確認做出來的東西不是大家所需要的，就應該立刻修改方向，這就是軸轉。當初flickr是一個線上遊戲網站，經過「軸轉」，將子計畫改成主計畫，就成為全世界最知名的照片分享服務。Twitter原本是線上廣播，也是經過「軸轉」，成為改變世界的新服務。

　　::誰應該使用「精實創業」？

　　「精實創業」特別適合有新想法的創業人士，無論你是自己一個人，有三五志同道合的好友，還是你在一家大公司裡準備向老闆提出一個不需要花太多錢的「內部創業」，這些都適合。只要是你的想法還沒有明確成功的範例，這本快速開發、快速獲得結果的方法，就是你的最佳選擇。

　　::對「精實創業」的經常誤解：

　　精實代表要盡可能節省。（錯）精實的重點在於開發─評估─學習的速度。

　　精實創業只適用網路創業。（錯）任何需面對太多不確定因素的新想法，都可以使用精實創業的方法。

　　精實創業者都是那些剛起步的小公司。(錯)許多擁有龐大資源的公司也適用精實創業，重點是有效率的學習與創新。

　　精實創業要用資料和消費者反應來取代了願景。(錯)願景是新創團隊的核心動力，藉由資料與消費者來確認行動方向。

　　本文取自行人出版《精實創業：用小實驗玩出大事業》

　　Lean Startup is a revolutionary new approach to management that is rapidly swelling into a movement across corporate America, from fledgling garage startups to mature global companies.

　　Most startups are built to fail. But those failures, according to entrepreneur Eric Ries, are preventable. Startups don’t fail because of bad execution, or missed deadlines, or blown budgets. They fail because they are building something nobody wants. Whether they arise from someone’s garage or are created within a mature Fortune 500 organization, new ventures, by definition, are designed to create new products or services under conditions of extreme uncertainly. Their primary mission is to find out what customers ultimately will buy. One of the central premises of The Lean Startup movement is what Ries calls “validated learning” about the customer. It is a way of getting continuous feedback from customers so that the company can shift directions or alter its plans inch by inch, minute by minute. Rather than creating an elaborate business plan and a product-centric approach, Lean Startup prizes testing your vision continuously with your customers and making constant adjustments.

　　Review

　　“The Lean Startup has a kind of inexorable logic, and Ries’ recommendations come as a bracing slap in the face to would-be tech moguls: Test your ideas before you bet the bank on them. Don’t listen to what focus groups say; watch what your customers do. Start with a modest offering and build on the aspects of it that prove valuable. Expect to get it wrong, and stay flexible (and solvent) enough to try again and again until you get it right. It’s a message that rings true to grizzled startup vets who got burned in the Great Bubble and to young filmgoers who left The Social Network with visions of young Zuckerberg dancing in their heads. It resonates with Web entrepreneurs blessed with worldwide reach and open source code. It’s the perfect philosophy for an era of limited resources, when the noun optimism is necessarily preceded by the adjective cautious.” —Wired

　　“I make all our managers read The Lean Startup.” —Jeffery Immelt, CEO, General Electric

　　“Eric has created a science where previously there was only art. A must read for every serious entrepreneur—and every manager interested in innovation.”—Marc Andreessen, co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, Opsware Inc. and Netscape

　　“This book should be mandatory reading for entrepreneurs, and the same goes for managers who want better entrepreneurial instincts. Ries’s book is loaded with fascinating stories—not to mention countless practical principles you’ll dearly wish you’d known five years ago.” —Dan Heath, co-author of Switch and Made to Stick

　　“Ries shows us how to cut through the fog of uncertainty that surrounds startups. His approach is rigorous; his prescriptions are practical and proven in the field. The Lean Startup will change the way we think about entrepreneurship. As startup success rates improve, it could do more to boost global economic growth than any management book written in years.” —Tom Eisenmann, Professor of Entrepreneurship, Harvard Business School

　　“The Lean Startup is the book whose lessons I want every entrepreneur to absorb and apply. I know of no better guide to improve the odds of a startup’s success.“—Mitchell Kapor, Founder, Lotus Development Corp.

　　”At Asana, we’ve been lucky to benefit from Eric’s advice firsthand; this book will enable him to help many more entrepreneurs answer the tough questions about their business.“—Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook and Asana

　　“Ries’ splendid book is the essential template to understand the crucial leadership challenge of our time: initiating and managing growth!” —Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California and author of the recently published, Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership.

　　”The Lean Startup isn’t just about how to create a more successful entrepreneurial business, it’s about what we can learn from those businesses to improve virtually everything we do. I imagine Lean Startup principles applied to government programs, to healthcare, and to solving the world’s great problems. It’s ultimately an answer to the question ’How can we learn more quickly what works, and discard what doesn’t?’“— Tim O’Reilly, CEO O’Reilly Media

　　“Eric Ries unravels the mysteries of entrepreneurship and reveals that magic and genius are not the necessary ingredients for success but instead proposes a scientific process that can be learnt and replicated. Whether you are a startup entrepreneur or corporate entrepreneur there are important lessons here for you on your quest toward the new and unknown.” —Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

　　“The roadmap for innovation for the 21st century. The ideas in The Lean Startup will help create the next industrial revolution.” —Steve Blank, lecturer, Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School

　　”The key lesson of this book is that start-ups happen in the present—that messy place between the past and the future where nothing happens according to PowerPoint. Ries’s ‘read and react’ approach to this sport, his relentless focus on validated learning, the never-ending anxiety of hovering between ‘persevere’ and ‘pivot’, all bear witness to his appreciation for the dynamics of entrepreneurship.“ —Geoffrey Moore, Author, Crossing the Chasm

　　”If you are an entrepreneur, read this book. If you are thinking about becoming an entrepreneur, read this book. If you are just curious about entrepreneurship, read this book. Starting Lean is today’s best practice for innovators. Do yourself a favor and read this book.“ —Randy Komisar, founding director of TiVo and author of the bestselling The Monk and the Riddle

　　“How do you apply the 50 year old ideas of Lean to the fast-paced, high uncertainty world of Startups? This book provides a brilliant, well-documented, and practical answer. It is sure to become a management classic.” —Don Reinertsen, author of The Principles of Product Development Flow

　　“The Lean Startup is a foundational must-read for founders, enabling them to reduce product failures by bringing structure and science to what is usually informal and an art. It provides actionable ways to avoid product-learning mistakes, rigorously evaluate early signals from the market through validated learning, and decide whether to persevere or to pivot, all challenges that heighten the chance of entrepreneurial failure.” —Professor Noam Wasserman, Harvard Business School

　　“One of the best and most insightful new books on entrepreneurship and management I’ve ever read. Should be required reading not only for the entrepreneurs that I work with, but for my friends and colleagues in various industries who have inevitably grappled with many of the challenges that The Lean Startup addresses.” —Eugene J. Huang, Partner, True North Venture Partners

　　”What would happen if businesses were built from the ground up to learn what their customers really wanted? The Lean Startup is the foundation for reimagining almost everything about how work works. Don’t let the word startup in the title confuse you. This is a cookbook for entrepreneurs in organizations of all sizes." —Roy Bahat, President, IGN Entertainment

　　“Every founding team should stop for 48 hours and read Lean Startup. Seriously stop and read this book now.” —Scott Case, CEO Startup America Partnership

　　“In business, a ‘lean’ enterprise is sustainable efficiency in action. Eric Ries’ revolutionary Lean Startup method will help bring your new business idea to an end result that is successful and sustainable. You’ll find innovative steps and strategies for creating and managing your own startup while learning from the real-life successes and collapses of others. This book is a must read for entrepreneurs who are truly ready to start something great!” —Ken Blanchard, coauthor of The One Minute Manager® and The One Minute Entrepreneur

　　“Every entrepreneur responsible for innovation within their organization should read this book. It entertainingly and meticulously develops a rigorous science for the innovation process through the methodology of “lean thinking”. This methodology provides novel and powerful tools for companies to improve the speed and efficiency of their innovation processes through minimum viable products, validated learning, innovation accounting, and actionable metrics. These tools will help organizations large and small to sustain innovation by effectively leveraging the time, passion, and skill of their talent pools.” —Andrea Goldsmith, professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, and cofounder of several startups

　　“Business is too important to be left to luck. Eric reveals the rigorous process that trumps luck in the invention of new products and new businesses. We’ve made this a centerpiece of how teams work in my company…it works! This book is the guided tour of the key innovative practices used inside Google, Toyota, and Facebook, that work in any business.” —Scott Cook, Founder and Chairman of the Executive Committee, Intuit

 

作者簡介

艾瑞克．萊斯（Eric Ries）

　　創業家，同時也是知名部落格《初創經驗談》（Startup Lessons Learned）的作者，是其第三家初創業事業IMVU公司的共同創辦人之一與首席科技長。萊斯經常受邀於各大商業活動中發表演說，並曾擔任多家初創公司、大企業、創投企業的商業與產品策略顧問，也是哈佛商學院的創業導師。其所倡導的精實創業理論受到眾多媒體的報導，包括紐約時報、華爾街日報、哈佛商業週刊、哈芬登郵報、以及許多部落格等。萊斯目前居住於美國加州舊金山。

　　更多資訊請見：WWW.THELEANSTARTUP.COM