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The Startup Way: Making Entrepreneurship a Fundamental Discipline of Every Enterprise

Eric Ries (Goodreads Author)

4.06 · Rating details · 2,725 ratings · 143 reviews

Entrepreneur and bestselling author of The Lean Startup Eric Ries reveals how entrepreneurial principles can be used by businesses ranging from established companies to early-stage startups to grow revenues, drive innovation, and emerge as truly modern organizations poised to take advantage of the enormous opportunities of the 21st century.

In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries ...more

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Published October 17th 2017 by Random House Audio Publishing Group

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Nov 13, 2017 Sylvain rated it liked it

As its title and pitch stands, the Startup Way is basically Lean Startup applied to big corporations.

Though the book may resonate with employees of large companies, I found several limitations:
- Eric Ries obviously has some experience of the corporate world, but the whole book mostly revolves around his coaching work at GE.
- If you're not a top executive, the book won't be of much help. Ries advocates that the transformation has to start from the top and be strongly supported by CxO level. Thoug ...more

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Oct 23, 2017 Frank Thun rated it did not like it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Oh, my dear. I loved the "Lean Startup," but with this book, Eric Ries shows that he is out of his waters.

The basic and only "major" idea of this book is to make Entrepreneurship a line function of every company, e.g., such as HR, Finance, IT, Sales and Purchasing are. In contrast to the other departments, the "Entrepreneurship" unit has some matrix functions in the other line functions, such as training and coaching entrepreneurs and maintaining start-ups like funding and governance structures ...more

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Nov 15, 2018 Stephen Heiner rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: business

Sometimes an author writes such an excellent book that you are willing to buy his/her next book, sight unseen. Eric Ries' outstanding The Lean Startup is still something I reference and ask new business partners and employees to read because it's such a fine and important book.

This is not.

Eric took the nimble world of startups and tried to pretend that discussing GE and the US government would be of interest to his Lean Startup audience. A total yawner that I had to struggle through and then fi ...more

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Aug 07, 2018 Jacek Bartczak rated it liked it

The title should sound "Lean Startup based on examples from more mature organizations". If you already read Lean Startup by Eric Ries you can skip the first part of The Startup Way.

In this book are plenty of interesting tips or case studies, but most of them are too general. "Company X had a problem, they implemented the lean methodology, made some tests and everyone was happy". In the middle of case studies usually, I felt I had missed some crucial details about the magic, I listened again the ...more

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Apr 01, 2018 Carsten Hansen rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: arc-business, business-online, business-entrepreneur, business-leadership

Already a fan of Eric Ries from his earlier work, I eagerly picked up this book. In this book he discusses how companies, irrespective of their size, and he uses his work with General Electic as a potent example, can use the startup way when thinking about product development, flexibility in thinking and the willingness to seek alternative solutions to the tested and tried formula that has worked for many years or is ingrained in the thinking of the company.
It is a potent reminder of why we sho ...more

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Feb 18, 2019 Lukasz Nalepa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-work

Very nice followup to the Lean Startup - but not as revolutionary for me, hence only 4 stars. As for the content of the book itself, the fact, that author pulled off Lean Startup approach in one of the iconic large organisations, adds a lot of credibility to it (and it's very interesting to read). I did not understood validated learning part though - or I'm just dissappointed that it boils down "just" to the set of metrics. I will definitely go back to that book many times, while trying to imple ...more

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Nov 20, 2017 kartik narayanan rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Read the full review at my site Digital Amrit

At a certain point, when your transformation has grown powerful enough to affect an entire company, when it has totally won out over whatever culture it was designed to replace, it is also itself too big for radical changes.

What is the book about?
The Startup Way is written by Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup.

This purpose of The Startup Way is to start with the Lean Startup principles and apply them in an enterprise context to make organisations m ...more

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May 20, 2018 Raphael Donaire added it

In this book, Eric Ries shared how is possible to create and scale up the lean startup thinking inside big companies. Based on examples like Intuit, General Electric, and the American Government, the author explains how those organizations use the startup way when thinking about product development, flexibility in thinking and the willingness to seek alternative solutions to be tested.
In my opinion, the book was written to convince CxO level the importance of rebuild organizations for the 21-ce ...more

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Oct 12, 2018 Jack Vinson rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: continuous-improvement

More details on my blog: https://www.jackvinson.com/blog/2018/...

A colleague handed me a copy of The Startup Way by Eric Ries because it is being referenced more and more in the work she is doing - and the predecessor (Lean Startup) has been on my to-read list for some time. Even without reading the predecessor, Ries summarizes the main Lean Startup concepts - and many of the ideas are readily heard in popular media.

In essence, this book is about taking the Lean Startup concepts and applying the ...more

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Sep 10, 2018 Tõnu Vahtra rated it really liked it · review of another edition

You might say you can achieve continuous innovation but sustaining it actually means you are signing into continuous transformation which unrealistic in most enterprise organizations. "Corporate transformation is corporate entrepreneurship."

Pivoting is among the central themes in this book also (meaning a change in direction without a change in vision).

I liked the definition and description of Executive level Champions whose key role is removing obstacles standing in way of the innovating team ...more

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Feb 15, 2018 Dave rated it liked it

Shelves: biz

I learned a lot Ries' first book the Lean Startup and thought it brought some great practices together. The Startup Way aims to apply those Lean Startup ideas to major corporations using GE as a case study.

I found chapters 3-5 to be the strongest.

The gap Ries leaves is for startups who have lost their way because they were initially successful and have grown past a two pizza team size. The entrepreneurial and risk taking takes a back seat to scaling and normalizing.

For a startup that's grown I learned a lot Ries' first book the Lean Startup and thought it brought some great practices together. The Startup Way aims to apply those Lean Startup ideas to major corporations using GE as a case study.

I found chapters 3-5 to be the strongest.

The gap Ries leaves is for startups who have lost their way because they were initially successful and have grown past a two pizza team size. The entrepreneurial and risk taking takes a back seat to scaling and normalizing.

For a startup that's grown it's good to review the chapter 3 qualities of the start up way: team focus, customer focus, employees given a stake (ESOP), leading indicators (engagements, conversions not revenue, profitability), meter funding (when does taking another round become a bad thing?), meritocracy, mission driven, and entrepenurialism as a career.

If your startup doesn't have these attributes teams then your not moving forward and your becoming a big company on a small scale. Breaking out of this is where Ries could be helpful, but he goes back to GE.

Chapter 4 is a nice review of Lean Startup - start with leap of faith assumptions, use MVP and Validated, Learning to get a Pivot or Perserve point. I found Sprint better at explaining this process see my review here: https://medium.com/@Dave.Nash.33/forg...

Chapter 5 talks about how to add accountability, process, culture and people to the start up way. On page 126 of the hard cover Ries has a diagram of the startup way that infuses traditional and start up org charts and includes entrepreneurialism as a function like marketing or accounting. This was the peak of the book for me.

So is the rest helpful? Only at a major corporation with huge management buy-in. Even GE - peaked last year at $32 and right now is in free fall down to $14 in market that's up 30% its down 50%. Imelt was a forward thinking CEO and HBR did a nice write up of how he improved GE in the September 2017 issue. It's good they did that then because now GE doesn't look so hot. I don't claim to be an expert in GE but that hurts the long term story for Ries. ...more

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Sep 13, 2019 John Stepper rated it really liked it

The “Lean Startup” is one of the best business books I’ve read, and this book is even bolder and more ambitious. It’s a comprehensive, detailed vision for how companies can manage “continuous transformation.” I found it compelling, useful, and inspiring.

It’s not a breezy read. (There is a chapter on accounting, after all.) But the tone is so positive and encouraging that I can’t help but be a huge Eric Ries fan, and look forward to following up on more of his work.

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Jun 23, 2019 Sergio Castillo rated it really liked it

The author provides a kind of simple yet powerful framework to start a new product. There are many real life samples from a wide variety of industries and sizes. Also, he is honest saying that this is not a "magical" formula, and as any other type of framework, it needs continuous improvements. Besides the methods and tools he propose, the book encourage and inspire you to innovate and think in a "entrepreneurial" way. ...more

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Jan 25, 2020 Raquellis rated it it was amazing

Shelves: technology, management, favorites, non-fiction, 2020

Definitely not as impactful as the "Lean Startup" but that's not a knock against it. I will probably reference this a billion times at my job. ...more

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Feb 10, 2019 Sipho rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: investing-and-business

The sequel to The Lean Startup is a pretty terrible book, that was a belaboured read. In this edition, Eric Ries argues for big companies and government organisations to be more entrepreneurial by changing their models of management to encourage innovation.

Key Takeaways

Part One: The Modern Company

One of the reasons it’s hard to build new things at larger companies is because people don’t have the mental model of “My job is to actually learn new things.”

Protecting and growing an existing p ...more

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Feb 26, 2020 AIT OUFKIR Yassine rated it it was amazing

Shelves: startup

Good book for implementing new technologies, Startup visions and planing into the corporate and big companies (multinational aswell). some replacement of famous lean management concept was discussed in the book, highly recommended also for every new startup willing to achieve a minimum viable product.

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Oct 17, 2017 Duong Tan rated it really liked it

Just another classic from Ries.

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Jun 07, 2018 Jeff Mousty rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: read-work

i enjoyed this book more than i did his first book. I feel like it expanded on the concepts better than just focusing on how to get to prototype alone. He did provide numerous examples of how his questions led to prototypes being explored that otherwise weren't though to be on the table. He had a clear example of this with GE in the book with a new model engine. As i read the book it gave me different lenses for which to view things from and got me thinking about various things i could be doing ...more

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Apr 11, 2020 Joc Cing rated it liked it · review of another edition

Having been an engineering manager cum entrepreneur myself for 12+ years, the philosophy of lean and experiment-based innovation harmonises very well with my own experiences and ways of scaling engineering teams. Its a book that is resoundingly clear especially for those of us who have been through the trenches and can empathise with the problems and solutions that are presented, but i think it could also be misconstrued as being too self-sufficient, avoiding the landmines that do emerge, giving ...more

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Jan 22, 2018 Julie Penner rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I would give this book 5 stars if I were a corporate innovator or on any kind of corporate innovation team. It is the most definitive solution for corporate innovation I’ve read. I only gave it four stars because I work with early-stage start ups and while Eric‘s suggestions are very relevant for start ups once they scale and have 100 employees are more, roughly, his earlier book lean start up is a better fit for the founders I work with.

I also loved his policy ideas listed in the epilogue and h ...more

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Oct 15, 2017 Christophe Addinquy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: lean-startup

The title of the book is a reminder of the famous "The Toyota Way". It's goal is to be a seminal book for the Lean Startup the same way the original is for the Lean. The goal is probably not achieved, but the transposition efforts of the author toward "Lean Startup for the entreprise" deserve considerations, espacially the intraprenarial ideas. The stories that support the ideas are also very well told.
Ma note de lecture en Français ici
...more

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Mar 29, 2018 Corey rated it really liked it

Summary:
This book was an in depth look at how entrepreneurial methods that are usually reserved for small scale endeavours can be implemented into large organisations. And that they should be implemented. The author states that the entrepreneurial way offers a great advantage to companies in modern business and that old ways of doing businesses inhibit growth, employee sanctification and the ultimate value of the organisation. I think this book is really valuable and informs a new way of working ...more

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Oct 31, 2017 Julian Dunn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

As the originator of the "Lean Startup" concept and popularizing the notion of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Eric Ries often gets accused of feeding the get-rich-quick technology ecosystem. For every story about, say, Juicero, there is some pundit two steps away ready to pounce and say startup methods are to blame. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Ries is about; what he teaches is actually process, discipline and methodology to reduce an enterpreneur's probability of failur As the originator of the "Lean Startup" concept and popularizing the notion of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), Eric Ries often gets accused of feeding the get-rich-quick technology ecosystem. For every story about, say, Juicero, there is some pundit two steps away ready to pounce and say startup methods are to blame. But this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Ries is about; what he teaches is actually process, discipline and methodology to reduce an enterpreneur's probability of failure. In this way, he is oriented towards building companies and products that last.

The Startup Way can actually be read as two distinct books: first, a lengthy case study on the application of Lean Startup methods to General Electric (GE), one of the world's largest and most well-respected companies, as they undertook a transformation of how they bring products to market. The second part of the book can be regarded as a polemic for how industry, government and indeed society need to change in order to create more entrepreneurship, and that focusing on delivering long-term value is what's important.

I appreciated Ries's viewpoints on the latter, although I am cynical that he will find many allies to join him, politicians and financiers being incentivized today towards the complete opposite (short-term optimization). It would take a fundamental change in our economic system precipitated by a painful, explosive event -- say, a civil war over differing values -- in order for this to happen. Nevertheless, I applaud him for putting his money where his mouth is and using his substantial privilege to try something like the Long-Term Stock Exchange to really try and change markets.

On the former topic, I took away one lesson, which is that "yes, an enterprise as large as GE can undergo such a transformation... but it can only happen with executive-level support". Assuming that FastWorks at GE has had the radical impact on product development that he talks about, it only succeeded because no less than Jeffrey Immelt, GE's CEO, was the executive sponsor. Ries makes the cogent observation that the lessons learned from GE are no less applicable to companies of any level, but how many such CEOs are willing to buck the trend of their short-term compensation incentives and lead such a transformation? In the end, even Immelt himself was walked out the door by "investors [who] grew disenchanted as the company’s stock price and profits stagnated in recent years" so the answer to the question of what kind of a CEO would sponsor something like this? is either an altruist or one who is so close to retirement that he could care less about career suicide.

GE may be a success story for Ries, and for that, we should applaud both him, and Immelt's vision. What we are left with, though, as with most business books, is a wonderful tale that is largely non-replicatable at other companies. That isn't to say that Ries' product development tactics are bad, or that it's not worth middle managers and "change agents" tilting at windmills to try and make them real. But it certainly won't be as smooth a journey as the book reads. ...more

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Sep 21, 2020 Chris Weatherburn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Issue with startups is that because of the short-term pressures, anything that can be done in one quarter has to be highly predictable in order to make future commitments based on its results. This means there is less innovation than you may expect.

Know how to manage growth before it happens.

Alfred Sloan from General Motors (GM) discovered “the key to co-ordinated control of decentralized operations" which allows to forecast demand for products after almost ran out of cash in 1921. Start ups Issue with startups is that because of the short-term pressures, anything that can be done in one quarter has to be highly predictable in order to make future commitments based on its results. This means there is less innovation than you may expect.

Know how to manage growth before it happens.

Alfred Sloan from General Motors (GM) discovered “the key to co-ordinated control of decentralized operations" which allows to forecast demand for products after almost ran out of cash in 1921. Start ups have a difficulty that it is impossible to produce an accurate forecast.
A modern company pursues a portfolio of smart experiments and contains the cost of failure by investing more in the ones that work, using a system of metered funding that increases as success is proved. If you are able to have distinct groups of people in your work and get a select few to focus on a clearly defined, high risk component of work they can act in a startup way.

Try to find entrepreneurs within your existing establishment. An entrepreneurs is trying things with good intent, as opposed to when renegade who is trying things for the sake of being challenging. If managing a large company and a subsection of the company are trying the high risk startup way method it important to give them a very clear budget to manage so scope creep does not occur .

Remember to focus on what your customer's needs – in future you need their buy in!
Test leap of faith assumptions by asking the customers, these are the claims in a business plan that will have the greatest impact on its success or failure so test these. Don't get overwhelmed by analysis paralysis.

Liked the example of a prototype with a cardboard phone to see how people would use it. Innovation Accounting (IA) is a way of evaluating progress when all the metrics typically used in an established company (revenue, customers, ROI, market share) are effectively zero. It provides a framework of chained leading indicators, each of which can help predict success.

If you like my review please see my website www.chrisweatherburn.com for more! ...more

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Mar 03, 2020 Chris rated it really liked it

Shelves: business, management, leadership

I listened to the audio book and I really enjoyed it. The book has some acronyms, LOFA: Leap Of Faith Assumptions and MVP: Most Viable Product that he uses throughout and the stories used to drive points home are great.

This book is the result of much of Eric's work with GE. One of the stories about the microwave and number of buttons used (about 5 of 29) on the microwave is great and the reason why there are so many buttons will probably astound you as it did me. It's just more proof of the pow ...more

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Apr 23, 2018 Razvan Rogoz rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Eric Ries is a brilliant author for bringing the concept of lean into the mainstream. Truth be told, lean is not that original and I can't place Ries under the heading of "brilliant management thinkers" but he took a seemingly complicated management methodology and made it so simple that anyone can understand it.

Lean thinking is based on creating MVPs (minimum viable products), testing and getting fast feedback. This is well explained in his first book. This book explains how lean can be impleme ...more

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Jan 20, 2019 Sam rated it liked it

Eric Ries explains and applies the lean startup methodology to enterprises. The author includes his personal experiences working in his own startup company, at General Electric, and as a consultant too. This book is a collection of applied startup principles as described by the author in his previous book The Lean Startup (2011). Some principles include: continuous innovation finds breakthroughs; startup is the simplest unit of work; organizations often lack entrepreneurship; enabling entreprene ...more

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Sep 05, 2020 Hofmann Joseph rated it it was amazing

With this book Eric Ries fully convinced me to rethink my professional life and start to work with a founder mentality. Not all can be applied 1:1 but the overall mindset is the essential thing in this book. By far the best and most influencal book i read within the last year. Highly recommend. I read The Lean Start Up first but its not necessary. Ries first book is summarized in the early chapters of this book. I can also recommend thr books Innovators Dilemma or Start Up J Curve if you want to ...more

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Oct 31, 2017 David J. Reese rated it it was amazing

I appreciate Eric's approach to changing the way people and organizations approach innovation. The transformations he describes with large existing companies that are entrenched in the old fashioned way of leadership and management is an inspiration for me. I have worked at multiple startups and several large companies. The fun and excitement along with the sense of accomplishment at smaller companies is something that I have experienced first hand throughout my career. I have also experienced t ...more

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Apr 14, 2019 Ruben rated it liked it

The Startup Way is the anticipated response to the overwhelming success of The Lean Startup. In this second book, Eric Ries specifically deals with how Lean Startup principles apply to large organizations and how to transform their way of working through what he calls entrepreneurial management.

Drawing from his experience at GE, Intuit, Cisco and US government institutions, Ries offers tangible advice on how to implement the startup way of working. The majority of the book is a sequence of loose ...more

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