Eric Ries

Today on the Super Creativity Podcast, I'm joined by someone whose ideas have shaped how an entire generation thinks about innovation, entrepreneurship, and building new ventures.

Eric Ries is the creator of the Lean Startup Movement, author of the global bestseller, The Lean Startup, founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, and one of the leading voices on how organizations can innovate, adapt, and grow in a world of uncertainty.

And in his new book, Incorruptible, Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great, Eric asks a bigger and deeper question.

Why do so many mission-driven organizations lose their way as they grow? And what would it take to design companies that stay true to their values, resist short-term pressures, and create long-term value without losing their soul? So in this conversation, we're going to explore the hidden forces that shape company culture, the idea of financial gravity, what creativity has to do with governance and organizational design, and what founders, leaders, and innovators can do to build companies that are not just successful, but worthy of trust.

... um, you know, e- e- like many people, I was working in a company called ThoughtWorks in London in sort of, um, around 2010, and it was just at the beginning of the lean startup boom.

Eric Ries had just written The Lean Startup, and so many people were fascinated about entrepreneurship and experimentation, and, you know, e- everybody wanted to do it.

But The Lean Startup felt very much like a book for startups.

And, um, our larger, more established or scaling companies were sort of like, "Well, look, we're not a startup.

They hated it, like sitting down with customers and, and showing prototypes of a, a mobile app they were building.

But w- we had these amazing breakthroughs in a bunch of the clients we were working on because the feedback loops got really good.

Uh, so Jez basically rang me up and said, uh, would I go out for lunch with him, and told me he was writing Lean Enterprise and, um, would I do a couple of chapters with him, and it was gonna be in Eric Ries's series.

So I was like, "Wow, this is a dream come true.

And that's just your basic basic.

Tam Sam Sam, problem solution, key metrics, lean canvas, big Eric Ries fan.

A lot of educators who want to become entrepreneurs and I love working with them because they know how to be right, Rick, classroom managers.

They know how to be administrators.

The moment people really started to use the business model canvas the right way is when they combined it with what came out of Silicon Valley with Steve Blank, who started it, the lean startup movement.

Eric Ries was actually a student of Steve's when he invested in Eric Ries' company.

And I'll draw this.

So let me jump to quickly my screen.

So yeah, man, just jump right in.

It's very easy when you look at large, and there's actually a whole book that's been written about by Eric Ries called Incorruptible about this whole tendency for large companies to, he uses the word corrupt, but it's not necessarily meaning unethical, but just that this kind of this continual pressure to move to the bottom, to go to the lowest common denominator, which often ultimately is shareholder control.

you know, driven decisions.

And it's also short term based, meaning it doesn't think about what would we want this business to be seven generations from now to think really long term.