I've been following Eric for a few months now and have bared witness to his rockstar makeover, best embodied in his Wired editorial photo. I sat down not sure what to expect.
Boy, has ER ever honed his speaking talent. Sure, he repeats stories and metaphors, but they work (my favourite of which is his Ghostbusters entrepreneurial analogy - "most entrepreneurs are waiting for the Marshmallow Man to show up!"When asked if lean was the only way to start a business, Eric responded that everyone should grow their business as they see fit but employ a lean mentality. For example, in terms of scalability, one should not invest in prevention but in the ability to respond quickly ("just-in-time scalability"). Eric made the distinction between asking customers what they want and building a product around your customers. He affirmed that customers do NOT know what they want, that genius design is real and encouraged. Experiments are run to determine how users behave, not what they want. Lean, in this sense, is about using capital efficiently (both time and money).
From this talk I learned that lean is not a prescriptive doctrine but a philosophy, a partnership that holds everyone accountable to their goals and ambitions. And this last point is the real key to lean, particularly it's meetups: Lean is about holding each other accountable to ones goals. It is a motivational tool - in that sense, it's amazing that Ries was able to market it so!
I'm looking forward to exploring more lean meetups and meeting more people here in Toronto.
