The Lean StartUp - 1 Start

Eric Ries starts off the first chapter of his book by emphasising, as he did in the introduction, that management is critical in a startup. The common misconception is that management hurts creativity but lack of management, according to the author, can hurt a startup a lot more. 

Correspondingly, it is indicated that the book was written in order to develop a new perspective for people to identify and measure productivity. For instance, even if you were in the office for 8 hours straight, that does not necessarily mean you were productive in the sense that you actually achieved something towards a larger vision or the goal that the startup is trying to achieve. 

Additionally, the author discusses the fact that this book will explain the process of Build-Measure-Learn, which can be used by entrepreneurs to quickly test their assumptions about their startups in order to validate their ideas. This may lead to a pivot in the startup's strategy and the changing of the product. However, according to Ries, the startup will rarely change their vision, since the entrepreneurs will be determined to reach their destination and the purpose for why they started that startup in the first place. 

Remember, this is in line with the quote adduced in the previous post, which was about Jeff Bezos emphasising that entrepreneurs ought to be flexible on the details of their product or service. This is largely because of the fact that their assumptions in the beginning are wrong or after a substantial period of time, the consumer demands have changed and hence, the product/service should change with it. In fact, in recent years we have since a large amount of companies shifting their focus to become more environmental due to the consumer demand changing. For instance, car automakers such as Ford and Nissan have come out with electric cars after seeing that a lot of consumers have been lately demanding electric vehicles rather than petroleum vehicles. (The incredible rise of Tesla illustrates the shift of consumers towards electric vehicles)