The Startup Way: How Modern Companies Use Entrepreneurial Management to Transform Culture and Drive Long-Term Growth

by Eric Ries

One day, as I was meeting with a Six Sigma black belt from one of GE’s industrial businesses—who was quite skeptical— I found myself distracted by the mug on his desk, which read: FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION. Nobody in the startup world could have such a mug, I mused; it would be ridiculous. My experience is full of situations where reality proved too unpredictable to avoid failure. I thought of the best, most successful entrepreneurs I know. What would their mug say? I settled on: I EAT FAILURE FOR BREAKFAST. The tension between those two slogans is a great starting point for understanding not only why startups have had such a hard time adopting traditional management methods, and vice versa—but also what connects them. There was a time when producing high-quality products on time, on budget, and at scale was one of the preeminent problems of the age. Understanding how to build quality into products from the inside out required mastering the new statistical science of variation, and then devising tools, methodologies, and training programs that could make doing so practical. Standardization, mass production, lean manufacturing, and Six Sigma are all fruits of this hard-won conceptual victory.