Quotes from Eric Ries

Bit by bit, system by system, those small investments added up to a robust product development process that allowed all our employees to work more creatively, with greatly reduced fear.

In 1911 Taylor wrote: "In the past, the man has been first; in the future, the system must be first." Taylor's prediction has come to pass.

Startup Lessons Learned,

Third, entrepreneurs need a personal stake in the outcome of their creations.

Conventionally, advice about internal innovators focuses on protecting the startup from the parent organization. I believe it is necessary to turn this model on its head.

Teams steeped in traditional product development methods are trained to make go/kill decisions on a regular basis. That is the essence of the waterfall or stage-gate development model.

The tremendous success of general management over the last century has provided unprecedented material abundance, but those management principles are ill suited to handle the chaos and uncertainty that startups must face.

Energy invested in success theater is energy that could have been used to help build a sustainable business.

established companies need to figure out how to accomplish what Scott Cook did in 1983, but on an industrial scale and with an established cohort of managers steeped in traditional management culture.

The CEO and VP of product, instead of building their business, are engaged in the drudgery of solving just one customer's problem.

The solution to this dilemma is a commitment to iteration. You have to commit to a locked-in agreement—ahead of time—that no matter what comes of testing the MVP, you will not give up hope. Successful entrepreneurs do not give up at the first sign of trouble, nor do they persevere the plane right into the ground. Instead, they possess a unique combination of perseverance and flexibility. The MVP is just the first step on a journey of learning.

We often frame internal innovation challenges by asking, How can we protect the internal startup from the parent organization? I would like to reframe and reverse the question: How can we protect the parent organization from the startup? In my experience, people defend themselves when they feel threatened, and no innovation can flourish if defensiveness is given free rein. In fact, this is why the common suggestion to hide the innovation team is misguided.

From the point of view of individual efficiency, working in large batches makes sense. It also has other benefits: it promotes skill building, makes it easier to hold individual contributors accountable, and, most important, allows experts to work without interruption. At least that's the theory. Unfortunately, reality seldom works out that way.

It is unfair to criticize these managers for their response; the criticism should be aimed at senior executives who failed to design a supportive system in which to operate and innovate.

If you're commuting to work, you don't give up because there's a detour in the road or you made a wrong turn. You remain thoroughly focused on getting to your destination.

When I work with product managers and designers in companies that use large batches, I often discover that they have to redo their work five or six times for every release.

The challenge here is to create a mechanism for empowering innovation teams out in the open. This is the path toward a sustainable culture of innovation over time as companies face repeated existential threats. My suggested solution is to create a sandbox for innovation that will contain the impact of the new innovation but not constrain the methods of the startup team.

As Cook says, "Developing these experimentation systems is the responsibility of senior management; they have to be put in by the leadership. It's moving leaders from playing Caesar with their thumbs up and down on every idea to—instead—putting in the culture and the systems so that teams can move and innovate at the speed of the experimentation system.

Whenever possible, the innovation team should be cross-functional and have a clear team leader, like the Toyota shusa. It should be empowered to build, market, and deploy products or features in the sandbox without prior approval. It should be required to report on the success or failure of those efforts by using standard actionable metrics and innovation accounting.

As startups grow, entrepreneurs can build organizations that learn how to balance the needs of existing customers with the challenges of finding new customers to serve, managing existing lines of business, and exploring new business models—all at the same time. And,

In a Wizard of Oz test, customers believe they are interacting with the actual product, but behind the scenes human beings are doing the work.

a good design is one that changes customer behavior for the better.

first answer four questions: Do consumers recognize that they have the problem you are trying to solve? If there was a solution, would they buy it? Would they buy it from us? Can we build a solution for that problem?

The sandbox also promotes rapid iteration. When people have a chance to see a project through from end to end and the work is done in small batches and delivers a clear verdict quickly, they benefit from the power of feedback. Each time they fail to move the numbers, they have a real opportunity to act on their findings immediately. Thus, these teams tend to converge on optimal solutions rapidly even if they start out with really bad ideas.