Marketing & Tech Book Club: The Startup Way by Eric Ries

The Martech Alliance team was super stoked when Eric Ries swung by our studio for a good ol’ chin wag about his latest book The Startup Way.

 

The Lean StartUp book cover

The Startup Way book coverHis seminal first book, The Lean Startup, is often nicknamed the Silicon Valley bible. The zeal with which his disciples promote this book and its principles of rapid, continuous innovation has spread to all corners of industry, from Silicon Valley to Wall Street.

Even if you haven’t heard of Eric Ries yet, his theories will almost definitely ring a bell. Heard of this little thing called a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)? Thought so. What about “pivoting” the business' model and operations? That’s also from Eric.

A few years after launching into fame with The Lean Startup, Eric realised that the term had been too narrowly understood. Large corporates can benefit enormously from this management philosophy, too.

His second book, The Startup Way, explores how to build a truly modern company - whether you’re a startup or a large corporate - by harnessing the power of entrepreneurship for every employee. It takes much more than simply “acting like a startup.” To become a successful company today, you need both continuous innovation and continuous transformation - the process of re-educating, re-aligning and embracing a new cultural mindset.

Eric has a real knack for making his ideas, which can seem straightforward on paper, feel compelling and urgent. In just 30 minutes, we talked about how to find the right internal change agent (and why they probably drive you crazy), the biggest roadblocks to company’s in the midst of a transformation, innovation accounting, how to transform into a truly modern company, and more.