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

Since its release in 2011, The Lean Startup has sold over a million copies and has been translated into over 30 languages. As businesses moved toward startup culture in the 2010s, The Lean Startup’s method quickly gained popularity among entrepreneurs looking to avoid the pitfalls of innovation: “Although the methodology is just a few years old, its concepts—such as ‘minimum viable product’ and ‘pivoting’—have quickly taken root in the start-up world, and business schools have already begun adapting their curricula to teach them” (Blank, Steve. “Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything.” Harvard Business Review, May 2013). It became a new strategy for organizations that wanted to move away from the hierarchical decision-making and slow progress of traditional business models.

One of the book’s most popular ideas is “validated learning,” which reframes failure as an opportunity for growth and refinement. Because validated learning comes from direct experience, “It is more concrete, more accurate, and faster than market forecasting or classical business planning. It is the principal antidote to the lethal problem of achieving failure: successfully executing a plan that leads nowhere” (38). This shattered the