The Second Wave of Lean Startup Books: Scaling Lean and The Leaderâs Guide
The fathers of Lean Startup, Eric Ries (The Lean Startup, the Build Measure Learn loop) and Ash Maurya (Running Lean; the Lean Canvas tool) have been at it again.Â
While Ries writes about how a large organization can establish a culture of leveraging lean startup principles, Maurya has gone on to focus on scaling the core process itself, introducing an interesting concept of the Customer Factory Blueprint, borrowing ideas from the Theory of Constraints.Â
Both topics (Lean Enterprise and Lean Startup Metrics / Lean Analytics) have been written about before, but itâs always interesting to hear from the pioneers themselves.
"Are they worth my time?â, you might be asking. Depends on what youâre looking for and what youâve read before. Thereâs a lot of books (most likely even better than âThe Leaderâs Guideâ) regarding using Lean Startup in a large organization, so Riesâ book will most likely be useful only if youâre very interested in the topic â say, if youâd be building an internal accelerator or working actively with developing corporate culture.
Knowing how to focus laser sharp is a core requirement for a startup with scarce resources. Ash Maurya seems to have something very interesting here regarding that topic. So if youâre building a scalable growth business (i.e. not consulting), âScaling Leanâ might give you much needed help in focusing your efforts. Also, be sure to read âLean Analyticsâ (4.08 / 5.00 stars on Goodreads)
Since I havenât read either of the books yet, as the mailman just brought them, hereâs some other people on how they like the books:
Huffpost on âThe Leaderâs Guideâ
Goodreads reviews on âThe Leaderâs Guideâ (3.60 / 5.00 stars)
Kevin DeWalt reviews âScaling Leanâ
Goodreads reviews on âScaling Leanâ (4.73 / 5.00 stars)