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

by Eric Ries

How are projects being killed? Before growth boards: They weren’t, for the most part, being canceled, for all the reasons we’ve discussed thus far. First round of growth boards: Projects were terminated by the growth board. Second round of growth boards: The responsibility shifted to the teams. “The teams would come in, and they would almost pitch the case like they wanted us to stop them.” Third round of growth boards (after the seed money had been handed down to product companies): The teams would come to the board and say, “We’ve already stopped the project.” This was a major step in many ways, according to Gebhardt. “The fact was that they felt better and better about being able to make that decision, they were secure it was the right thing to do, and they realized they were saving money for the company and that we would actually thank them for what they were doing.”