The Horizons Tracker

MAY 31, 2021

The importance of the “pivot” has been a fundamental part of the entrepreneurial playbook for much of the near-decade it’s been since Eric Ries first published his groundbreaking The Lean Startup but the ability to adapt has been especially crucial during a pandemic in which so much of what we thought we knew has been tipped upside down.

Ries 115

Ries Software Emotional Intelligence Ethics 115

RapidStart Leadership

MAY 9, 2017

After weeks of laborious effort, he had managed to drill through 686 feet of solid limestone with no luck. Eric Ries Click To Tweet. Oil had recently been found not far away on Black Creek. Not as Easy as He Thought. But the quick success he hoped for was not to be. A pivot is a change in strategy, not vision.

Ries 120

Ries Bottom-up Objective Incentives 120

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 18, 2012

They're what Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup , calls "vanity metrics.". That's what Ries calls an "engine of growth.". Seek out what Ries refers to as "actionable metrics." Traditionally, managers were used to achieving business objectives in departments that make things, sell things, or manage money.

Metrics 22

Metrics Media Ries Reference 22

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 15, 2012

It's about learning the right kind of lesson, or what Lean Startup guru Eric Ries describes as validated learning. Learning is the essential unit of progress for start-ups," writes Ries. As we are faced with interim failures in our innovation process, the narrative we construct is key. It's not just that you learn a lesson.

Ries 22

Ries Learning Curve Learning-by-Doing Bottom-up 22

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 15, 2012

It's about learning the right kind of lesson, or what Lean Startup guru Eric Ries describes as validated learning. Learning is the essential unit of progress for start-ups," writes Ries. As we are faced with interim failures in our innovation process, the narrative we construct is key. It's not just that you learn a lesson.

Ries 22

Ries Learning Curve Learning-by-Doing Bottom-up 22

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 23, 2012

After all, Lafley's bent is to manage innovation in a systematic, disciplined way. Ries builds off the teaching of Innovation Master Steve Blank and urges entrepreneurs to "remove waste" from the creation of new businesses by being very scientific in the management of unknowns. Lafley and not Steve Jobs on my list.

Innovation 17

Innovation Ries Mauborgne Open-book 17

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 30, 2012

In The Lean Start-Up , Eric Ries talked about vanity metrics — numbers that create the illusion of success, rather than validate actual progress. It's juggling to manage your team, customers, investors, and strategic partners all at once. The problem isn't what the message says, but what it doesn't. You are attracted to titles.

Ries 20

Ries IPO Entrepreneur Maturity 20

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 23, 2014

It’s a framework for entrepreneurs, building on “The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries. Vic Roos, Lead Purchasing Program Manager, explained, “We let a finance guy in the room. At times it drove the materials manager crazy.” David Schofield, Design Manager — Refrigeration, said, “Typically we needed to have a one- or two-year payback.

Ries 14

Ries Waterman Finance Learning-by-Doing 14

Harvard Business Review

DECEMBER 15, 2011

As Eric Ries points out in his new book The Lean Startup , developing the best code or building the best product in the world is meaningless if your customers don't end up wanting it. Instead, test early and often to ensure you're not wasting your time.

Ries 22

Ries Budgeting Conference Magazine 22

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 30, 2014

If it’s the former, that question you raised will be carefully considered and may trigger ongoing discussion — and possibly action — by the company’s managers and leaders. Ries points out that at most companies, “the resources flow to the person with the most confident, best plan. So why open the floodgates?

Company 14

Company Ries Christensen Innovation 14

Harvard Business Review

MAY 24, 2012

I led a cross-functional agile team of developers, designers, product managers and QA specialists tasked with improving the communication stream between recruiters and jobseekers on a thriving online job board. Successful ideas were evolved and expanded while failed efforts were quickly removed or improved upon.

Agility 16

Agility Ries Constraint Software 16

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 8, 2014

The goal, says Eric Ries of The Lean Startup fame, is to create a minimum viable product that you’ll fully expect to iterate over time. Failure Managing yourself Personal effectiveness' But innovation of any sort entails risk and trying new things – and that mandates failure. It happens every day.

Ries 15

Ries Open-book Competitive Advantage Education 15

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 1, 2012

If Gerber's failed adult food business had been born outside of its existing organization, would the managers have distributed a product that looked like Gerber baby food? Leaders must manage internal transfer pricing to ensure the development of viable business models. Transfer pricing inside a company is already a complex issue.

Innovation 16

Innovation Company ROI Maturity 16

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 21, 2011

And to make it happen, they're learning to shed the red tape, meetings, managers, and memos that made industrial-age business such a dreary, dismal drag.

Hypercompetition 15

Hypercompetition Ries Definition Bottom-up 15

Harvard Business Review

MARCH 22, 2011

HP had grown so large, to about $30 billion in sales, that Barnholt and other senior managers felt pinched to reach their double-digit growth goals. To launch HP's big new businesses, the company's managers took rigorously logical steps. It averaged 18% annual growth from 1939 to 1999. But by the mid-1990s, the challenges mounted.

Ries 14

Ries Market Segmentation Agility Christensen 14

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 3, 2014

Nick is a typical manager at a one of the world’s most successful widget companies. But like most hierarchical organizations, Nick’s managers and their managers expect to be informed of his ideas before they make their way to the big boss. So the challenge to managers is determining how to manage the consensus tax.

Consensus 15

Consensus Innovation Company Ries 15

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 13, 2017

General Electric, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, Walmart, and CitiGroup — all were businesses led by managers who were experts in efficiency and optimization and who grew their businesses by making them work better than they had previously. In 2001 the list of companies with the highest market caps was dominated by blue chips.

CEO 8

CEO Consensus Management Metrics 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 7, 2012

The Lean Start-Up movement, as exemplified in Eric Ries' book The Lean Start-Up , has appropriately focused a great deal of attention on the hard decisions and techniques required to create a company from nothing. Systems were put in place and professional managers with experience in building mission-critical products were hired.

P&L 15

P&L Lewin EBITDA Ries 15

Harvard Business Review

MAY 30, 2018

You’re probably familiar with the “minimum viable product” of Eric Ries’ Lean Start-Up fame; but here I’m talking about the acronymically identical “minimum viable pilot.” Fortunately, they tend to be manageable. Think “lean pilots.” ” Insight Center. Competing in the Future.

KPI 12

KPI Innovation Ries Banking 12

Harvard Business Review

JULY 16, 2013

For a designer like myself, it''s easy to recognize which executives know their products intimately, and which manage from a spreadsheet. That''s a big change from only five years ago, when UX wasn''t on anyone''s radar outside the tech world. A few years ago, this characterization would have seemed like a step down for a senior executive.

Leadership 14

Leadership Ries CEO Products 14

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 17, 2012

In The Lean Start-Up , Eric Ries, a next generation thought leader and a clear successor to Clayton Christensen, provides a scientific approach to managing innovation, whether at a one-person start-up or Fortune 100 company. A leader leans into the future.

Books 15

Books Christensen Ries Disruptive Innovation 15

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 22, 2012

Sometimes, it seems they've always loomed large: for decades, Michael Porter has been synonymous with strategy, and John Kotter with change management. One minute, you've never heard of Eric Ries , and the next he's on the cover of Inc. Other times, the explosion onto the scene is fast and furious.

Reputation 11

Reputation Case Study Ries Kotter 11

Harvard Business Review

MAY 30, 2013

In 2010, one of us was sitting in a room at the Harvard Business School with Eric Ries and a number of budding entrepreneurs. The language has been widely adopted, and that includes some folks who haven''t yet had the chance to read Ries'' work or digest the ideas behind it. One of these young entrepreneurs in particular stood out.

Company 12

Company Ries Maturity Innovation 12

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 2, 2013

They hire 20-somethings to manage the corporate Twitter account, and they are in the process of spending untold dollars on social media monitoring systems. They have marketing departments retaining outside social media consultants. They pay content marketing firms to write company blogs and produce YouTube videos.

Ries 10

Ries Brand Media Early Adopters 10

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 23, 2014

Since 2012, I’ve co-hosted The Lean Startup Conference with Eric Ries. Even just offering it can draw proposals from strong candidates who are new to public speaking and can prompt managers to encourage promising stars to apply. For conference hosts, however, past performance need not be an indicator of future results.

Conference 15

Conference Stage-Gate Proposal Ries 15

Harvard Business Review

MAY 13, 2014

GE is an icon of management best practices. That includes learning from the outside and striving to adopt certain start-up practices, with a focus on three key management processes: (1) resource allocation that nurtures future businesses, (2) faster-cycle product development, and (3) partnering with start-ups.

Six Sigma 11

Six Sigma Incubator Payback Period Ries 11

Harvard Business Review

JANUARY 2, 2013

Middle managers with limited resources and set evaluation metrics will simply operate in a predictable fashion. As Eric Ries and Steve Blank are so quick to point out, innovation requires iteration. At its core, Penrose's idea is the reason innovation requires sponsorship.

Execution 12

Execution Innovation How To Ries 12

Harvard Business Review

JUNE 13, 2014

Tech start-ups employ the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) concept, made popular by Eric Ries in The Lean Start-Up , to test product hypotheses with minimal resources. Of course customer perceptions of a brand determine the strength and value of a brand, so brand managers must carefully cultivate the proper perceptions.

Brand 12

Brand Ries Entrepreneur Agility 12

Harvard Business Review

OCTOBER 30, 2017

In his Harvard Business Review article summing up his tenure, Immelt recalls that the two things that influenced him most were Marc Andreessen’s 2011 Wall Street Journal article “ Why Software Is Eating the World ” and Eric Ries’s book The Lean Startup. Innovation at GE was on a roll. Then it wasn’t.

Long-term 8

Long-term Ries Short-term Price 8

Harvard Business Review

FEBRUARY 13, 2017

” Discovery-driven planning has since become a staple in business schools’ entrepreneurship curricula and a go-to technique for those who manage innovation. In short, too many firms used conventional planning to manage their new ventures. Since then, they have taught the concepts to thousands of students and managers.

Planning 12

Planning Benchmarking Project Competitive Advantage 12

Harvard Business Review

MAY 21, 2015

People who judge prefer having closure, with all loose ends tied up, when managing tasks and making decisions. Innovative Teams (20-Minute Manager Series). No one style is better than another, and each car­ries its own set of benefits to a collaborative discus­sion. Judging or perceiving. Excerpted from.

Diversity 8

Diversity Ries Creativity Groupthink 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 26, 2013

In my eyes, the work Steve Blank, Eric Ries, and others have done to provide a cogent, accessible frame around the academic concepts of emergent strategy is one of the most important contributions to the innovation movement over the past few years. I love Lean.

Ries 8

Ries Telecommunications Business Model Competitive Advantage 8

Harvard Business Review

MAY 9, 2016

Al Ries and Jack Trout capture the essence of this model in their classic book Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind. ” In this view, a brand is not something you make, it’s something you manage. ” A brand is not something you manage over time. The most recent wave focuses on brand as experience.

Brand 8

Brand Airlines Health Care Trout 8

Harvard Business Review

AUGUST 16, 2016

” Lean startup, popularized by writers and entrepreneurs like Eric Ries and Steve Blank, can deliver big benefits inside big companies. “It’s like their baby,” says Telefónica innovation manager Susana Jurado Apruzzese. “They want to see their product commercialized.”

Company 8

Company Airlines Ries Survey 8

Harvard Business Review

NOVEMBER 7, 2018

” But achieving decentralization requires a meaningful investment in capital in order to attract a distributed network of users and network managers that maintain the decentralized ledgers (or nodes). As Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin notes , “Once you adopt a richer economic model…decentralization becomes more important.”

Cost 8

Cost Decentralization Finance Entrepreneur 8

Harvard Business Review

APRIL 27, 2015

In a McKinsey poll , 94% of the managers surveyed said they were dissatisfied with their company’s innovation performance. Over the past two decades, we’ve led dozens of innovation projects and have talked to thousands of managers about the challenge of building a high-performance innovation “engine.”

Innovation 8

Innovation Company Engineering Supply Chain 8