Running Lean - Ash Maurya

Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works
We live in an age of unparalleled opportunity for innovation. 
We're building more products than ever before, but most of them fail--not because we can't complete what we set out to build, but because we waste time, money, and effort building the wrong product.
What we need is a systematic process for quickly vetting product ideas and raising our odds of success. 
That's the promise of Running Lean.

In this inspiring book, Ash Maurya takes you through an exacting strategy for achieving a "product/market fit" for your fledgling venture, based on his own experience in building a wide array of products from high-tech to no-tech. 
Throughout, he builds on the ideas and concepts of several innovative methodologies, including the Lean Startup, Customer Development, and bootstrapping.

Running Lean is an ideal tool for business managers, CEOs, small business owners, developers and programmers, and anyone who's interested in starting a business project.

Get to know how to:

• Find a problem worth solving, then define a solution
• Engage your customers throughout the development cycle
• Continually test your product with smaller, faster iterations
• Build a feature, measure customer response, and verify/refute the idea
• Know when to "pivot" by changing your plan's course
• Maximize your efforts for speed, learning, and focus
• Learn the ideal time to raise your "big round" of funding

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com  ] 


Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 4.07 out of 5 (5,970 Ratings; 141 Reviews - As on March 31 2017)
My Rating:  4 out of 5
My Comments:  Nice cook book to jump start your Lean Startup process !
Buying Options 
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Traction by Gino Wickman

Get a Grip On Your Business
Do you have a grip on your business, or does your business have a grip on you?

All entrepreneurs and business leaders face similar frustrations—personnel conflict, profit woes, and inadequate growth. 
Decisions never seem to get made, or, once made, fail to be properly implemented. 
But there is a solution. It’s not complicated or theoretical.The Entrepreneurial Operating System® is a practical method for achieving the business success you have always envisioned. 
More than 2,000 companies have discovered what EOS can do.

In Traction, you’ll learn the secrets of strengthening the six key components of your business. 
You’ll discover simple yet powerful ways to run your company that will give you and your leadership team more focus, more growth, and more enjoyment. 
Successful companies are applying Traction every day to run profitable, frustration-free businesses—and you can too.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 


Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 4.15 out of 5 (713 Ratings; 78 Reviews - As on December 29 2016)
My Rating:  3.5 out of 5
My Comments: Sort of simplified version of Verne Harnish's book Scaling Up. Useful for startup companies.


Buying Options 
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Scaling Up - Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles

In Scaling Up, Harnish and his team share practical tools and techniques for building an industry-dominating business.
These approaches have been honed from over three decades of advising tens of thousands of CEOs and executives and helping them navigate the increasing complexities (and weight) that come with scaling up a venture. 
This book is written so everyone -- from frontline employees to senior executives -- can get aligned in contributing to the growth of a firm. 
There's no reason to do it alone, yet many top leaders feel like they are the ones dragging the rest of the organization up the S-curve of growth. 
The goal of this book is to help you turn what feels like an anchor into wind at your back -- creating a company where the team is engaged; the customers are doing your marketing; and everyone is making money. 
To accomplish this, Scaling Up focuses on the four major decision areas every company must get right: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. 
The book includes a series of new one-page tools including the updated One-Page Strategic Plan and the Rockefeller Habits Checklist (TM), which more than 40,000 firms around the globe have used to scale their companies successfully -- many to $1 billion and beyond. 
Running a business is ultimately about freedom.  
Scaling Up shows business leaders how to get their organizations moving in sync to create something significant and enjoy the ride.

[Book Description Source: www.amazon.com ] 


Ratings
Goodreads Rating - 4.24 out of 5 (761 Ratings; 64 Reviews - As on November 27 2016)
My Rating:  4 out of 5
My Comments: Very practical guide to scaling up your business. Provides several useful tools and techniques.  A slightly dry read but the utility of the book more than makes it up for it.


Buying Options 
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The Innovator's Toolkit - David Silverstein, Philip Samuel, Neil DeCarlo

50+ Techniques for Predictable and Sustainable Organic Growth

The Innovator's Toolkit is an essential companion for every innovator, innovation team leader, operations manager, and corporate change agent who needs to drive organic growth. 
Written and presented in an easy-to-use reference format, the book helps users understand why, when, and how to apply each technique for maximum benefits and results. 
The fifty-plus tools and techniques in this book are organized around a framework for identifying innovation opportunities, generating new and unusual ideas, selecting the best ideas for further refinement, and implementing new solutions that better meet customer expectations.
This revised second edition includes significant updates to nearly two dozen techniques.
Also offers several brand new techniques, including Idea Harvesting and Treatment, Seventy-six Standard Solutions, and Six Thinking Hats
This updated and revised edition of The Innovator's Toolkit simply helps innovation leaders, managers, and specialists do their jobs better than ever before giving them more confidence, greatly reducing the chance of expensive failures, and packing more practical innovation knowhow under one cover than ever before.

 [Book Description Source: www.amazon.com]

Goodreads Rating - 3.84 out of 5 (56 Ratings, 6 Reviews)

My Rating:  4 out of 5. 

Buying Options 
 Buy from Amazon.com  Buy from Amazon.in
Buy the Kindle  version
(Anybody can read Kindle books—even without a Kindle device—with the FREE Kindle app for smartphones and tablets.)
 

Getting to Plan B by by John W. Mullins & Randy Komisar

 Breaking Through to a Better Business Model
You have a new venture in mind. 
And you've crafted a business plan so detailed it's a work of art. 
Don't get too attached to it.
As John Mullins and Randy Komisar explain in Getting to Plan B, new businesses are fraught with uncertainty. 
To succeed, you must change the plan in real time as the inevitable challenges arise.
In fact, studies show that entrepreneurs who stick slavishly to their Plan A stand a greater chance of failing-and that many successful businesses barely resemble their founders' original idea.
The authors provide a rigorous process for stress testing your Plan A and determining how to alter it so your business makes money, solves customers' needs, and endures. 
You'll discover strategies for:
-Identifying the leap-of-faith assumptions hidden in your plan
-Testing those assumptions and unearthing why the plan might not work
-Reconfiguring the five components of your business model-revenue model, gross margin model, operating model, working capital model, and investment model-to create a sounder Plan B.
Filled with success stories and cautionary tales, this book offers real cases illustrating the authors' unique process. 
Whether your idea is for a start-up or a new business unit within your organization, Getting to Plan B contains the road map you need to reach success.

 [Book Description Source: www.amazon.com]

Goodreads Rating - 3.84 out of 5 (179 Ratings, 21 Reviews)

My Rating:  3 out of 5. 

Buying Options 
 

Buy from Amazon.com  Buy from Amazon.in
Buy the Kindle  version
(Anybody can read Kindle books—even without a Kindle device—with the FREE Kindle app for smartphones and tablets.)

50 Best Business Ideas of the Last 50 years by Ian Wallis (Editor)

As the title mentions this book offers a selection of 50 business ideas which according to the editor are the best ones over the last 50 years.
Each of these business ideas are described in a seperate chapter in a structured manner  as per the following sections -
The Background,  Commercial Impact, What Happened Next


The ideas are categorized as per the decades as follows:

1960s (18 chapters) - The Pill, The Disposable Nappy, Contact Lenses, Sattelite Television, Biometrics, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), The Ring Pull, Touch-tone Phones, Equal Opportunities Policy, Video Conferencing, The Fax Machine, The Plastic Bag, The Microwave Oven, The Smoke Alarm, Kevlar, Aerosol Deodorant, Computer-aided design (CAD),The Internet

1970s (14 chapters) - The Pocket Calculator, Budget Airlines, Email,The Automated Teller Machine (ATM),The Computer Game, Just-in-Time Inventory Management, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI),VHS,The Barcode, Electronic Point-of-sale (EPOS) Technology, The Global Positioning System (GPS), Fibre Optics, The Electronic Spreadsheet,The Walkman

1980s (9 chapters) - The Personal Computer (PC),Infrared Remote Controls,The Post-it Note,

The Compact Disc (CD), The 20-70-10 Rule,The Digital Camera, Remote Keyless Entry (RKE) Systems, Dyson (Dual Cyclone Vacuum Cleaner), Tablet Computers
1990s (7 chapters) -  International Overnight Courier Services,The Smartphone, Search Engines, Pay-per-click Advertising, Pay-by-swipe Technology,The Hybrid Car,The MP3 Player

2000s (2 chapters) - Google's 20% Innovation Time,The E-reader

Many writers (too many to be named) have contributed to the chapters in the book. But apart from the fact that there are some interesting facts you can find here and there in bits and pieces, none of the chapters could keep me engaged. The narration and discussions lack depth and vitality. It is just overloading the reader with facts.
You can make note of the ideas from the above list and look them up in the internet. Or you can collate all the Wikipedia articles about these ideas in one place. They will certainly make  a better read and provide you more depth in the subject matter.

But if you want some quick facts about  the 50 ideas in a handy and compact form, then this book may serve some purpose.

Links

• Goodreads Ratings and Reviews -  Average Rating 3.5 / 5;  2 ratings;

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Innovation and Entrepreneurship

Authors:    John Bessant and Joe Tidd 
Published: 2007
Publisher:  John Wiley & Sons Ltd. ;
Paperback: 478 pages

The authors who are experienced academicians have written this book to provide an accessible and highly structured introduction to innovation and entrepreneurship for students of business and management.
A very comprehensive text book which admirably serves the purpose for which it has been written ! 
Read more about this book at my professional website.

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Business Genius

Author:        Peter Fisk

Published   2008 

Publisher:   Capstone Publishing Ltd. 

Hardcover: 360 pages. 

   
Genius = Intelligence + Imagination = Extraordinary Results
We need to combine intelligence and imagination (the Yin and the Yang) in a synergistic manner to gain new insights, generate unusual ideas and achieve extraordinary results. This is the underlying theme of this book.
The four Yin-Yang fusions discussed in four parts of this book are:
1. Right Brain + Left Brain = Holistic Thinking
2. Radical Ideas + Practical Action = Dramatic Impact
3. Future Back + Now Forward = Enlightened Innovation
                                   4. Outside In + Inside Out = Engaged Customers
A very handy and information packed reference book which every business professional should read ! 
Read an extended summary of this book in my professional blog.

The Lean Startup

Author:         Eric Ries,  

Published:   2011

Publisher:    Crown Business 

Paperback: 284 pages

 

This book introduces the concepts of the Lean Startup and provides a framework for the entrepreneurs to successfully build and manage startups  and launch new products or services through continuous innovation.

The conversational  story-telling style of the author though somewhat repetitive in content makes this book an  interesting and easy read.

A very insightful and useful book by an entrepreneur for the entrepreneurs !

To read an extended summary of this book please visit my business blog.

Leaving Microsoft to Change the World

Author:         John Wood
Published:   2008
Publisher:    Collins
Paperback: 284 pages

In late 1990s the author John Wood ,then a Marketing Director in Microsoft, was on a three weeks  trekking vacation in Nepal.
He came across a school in a remote village. The school had 450  students . But all it had in the name of a library  was a miserable collection of  20 odd books which included -a Danielle Steel romance, an Umberto Ecco novel in Italian, a Lonely Planet guide to Mongolia, a copy of "Finnegans Wake" ! Certainly not what you would expect to see in a school library.  It was obvious that the collection had been put together using books discarded by the previous trekkers. These books were both physically (the books were kept in a locked cupboard !) and intellectually out of school children's reach.
The headmaster of the school had a strong desire to inculcate the habit of reading among the students but was seriously hampered by lack of resources to build a good school library. He told the author "Perhaps, sir, you will someday comeback with books."
This sentence changed John Wood's life forever. It deeply moved him. He contacted nearly 100 friends and made a strong appeal to them to donate books for the school. This campaign was a huge success and thus the foundations of a massive social entrepreneurship undertaking  now known as "Room to Read" were laid.

Room to Read's mission is to provide opportunity for under-privileged children to gain the gift of education. Its strategy includes:

• Partnering with villages to build schools
• Establishing libraries and filling them with donated English books and local-language books published by it.
• Providing computer and language labs to improve employment skills, and
• Providing scholarships for under-privileged young girls who cannot afford fees that are required of all students, even those attending public schools.

To ensure the likelihood for success and long -term sustainability, Room to Read enlists community involvement and co-investment. Instead of  just doling out funds in a condescending manner , Room to Read believes in making the beneficiary earn it by working in partnership with Room to Read. Thus it preserves the dignity of the beneficiary and also teaches them to take care of themselves in future. 

Till date (May 2012)  Room to Read  has helped build over 1500 schools and 13,000 libraries and benefited about 6 million children of Third World countries like Nepal, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa and Tanzania.

This book tells  how it all happened. It has three parts.

Part 1 - Discovering Nepal; Leaving Microsoft: In this part Wood talks about how he discovered a pathetic school library during his vacation and helped in enriching it with children's books with the help of his father and friends. He also tells  how  after debating a lot he walked away from  Microsoft and also suffered a break-off  from his girl friend who did not share his passion for the ambitious child education mission he wanted to undertake.

Part II -  Starting Over: This part deals with the early days of Room to Read after Wood left Microsoft and how he built the organization making full use of lessons and skills he learned in Microsoft (especially from Steve Ballmer).

Part III - Hitting Our Stride: How 'Room to Read' expanded its operations through numerous fund raising campaigns is the main theme of this part.

All the chapters in this book narrate several touching stories  of how the author received help from various sources and how hard some under-privileged people work for a better education. Some of the chapters in this book  have a side-box to highlight  a  success story or a lesson learned or some tips on entrepreneurship.
The book has also several heartwarming  photographs of smiling children whose life have been positively impacted by Room to Read programs.

This book is an  inspiring and fascinating saga of Room to Read with doses of humor sprinkled in it. It is also a sort of post-Microsoft autobiography of the author. The author comes out as an ambitious, passionate and sincere person dedicated to the cause. It is a very noble cause indeed and everybody who is involved in this organization has to be admired at.

A must read for  entrepreneurs, educationists , social workers and anyone who cares for children !

Links:

• Room to Read - Official Website
• Book Website 
• Excerpt from the book : Chapter 1
• Life lessons from John Wood's biography

Key takeaways from this book:

•  "You are old enough to know that the only person  you have to satisfy in life is yourself. Do what you think is the right thing to do and get used to answering only to yourself" - Advice given by author's father when the author  was a school kid.
• "Look , there are two ways to remove a Band-Aid: slowly and painfully, or quickly and painfully. Your choice." - A friend's advice to the author when he was debating whether to leave Microsoft.
• Most people in the nonprofit world hate to ask others for money. They need to get past this barrier, quickly or their organization will suffer.
•  5 Core principles which Wood  reviews  before meeting with prospective donors:
1. Play up the fact that the donors, who would have been helped in their own life by education, now have the opportunity to give that same gift back to hundreds of children in the developing world.
2. Show the donors a direct connection between what they give and what gets done as a result.
3. Keep the overhead for running  Room to Read low, so donors will know that 90 percent on the dollars goes to the projects, not to administrative and fund-raising expenses.
4. Passion sells. There is not enough of it in the world, so when people meet a passionate individual, that person really stands out.
5. People are looking for more meaning in their lives. Funding education provides a great feeling that you have helped to change the world for better.

• Hope and Optimism, Not Doom and Gloom - Some charities find it effective to show photos of a child covered in flies, or a malnourished family lying in  dust. These images negate the inherent dignity of each human being. Guilt should not be used as a marketing tool. This is also in the financial interest of the charity because potential donors want hope and optimism in their lives. They want to see solutions. If we accost them with images of a poor person, they are likely to be sad, but may not take action. If you instead present a photo of a kid from the inner city in his graduation cap and gown, a little girl smiling as a result of a successful cleft palate operation, or farmers in Honduras using their new well, then people are more likely to share in that optimism by donating to the cause.
• Think Big from Day One - There is a saying at Microsoft - "Go big or go home" - and this lies at the heart of John Wood's advice to anyone who wants to create change. The problems facing the world today are immense. This is not a time for incremental thinking. If a cause is worth devoting your time to, you owe it to yourself - and those you will serve - to think in a big way. Thinking big can be self-fulfilling prophecy, because bold goals will attract bold people.
• Every entrepreneur needs a strong second-in-command.
• The positive and proactive forces in this universe will always defeat the dark and nihilistic ones. We simply must create spaces in which concerned citizens are offered a way to take action.
• Lessons learned from Microsoft  that helped the author :
• Intense Focus on Results - Rather than talking about what we are going to do, talk about what we have done.
• You cannot attack a person, but you can attack an idea.
•  Be data-driven. Passionately study every facet of your operations to such a degree that related facts and figures are seared into your brian.
• Be loyal to those who work for you

• True change requires mass participation, because one person writing a large check is never enough. Rely more on small contributions from large number of people rather than a few big donations from a small number of  donors.
• True entrepreneurs are not afraid to declare to the world that they are going to fill a market gap or offer a new product or service, even if they are not yet entirely sure how they are going to do so. They simply take the leap. 
• The hope that comes through education, the belief that in schooling lies the key to a brighter tomorrow - those are ubiquitous throughout so much of the developing world.
• "Do not wish anything to be what you are, and try to be that perfectly" - A quote from St. Francis de Sales, which a friend of the author wrote on his birthday card.
• Social Entrepreneurship - Social entrepreneurship is the melding of the best practices of the business world with the social focus of the charitable sector. Social entrepreneurs embrace ideas like reporting on their results, measuring the return on their investments, keeping their overhead expenses low, and constantly improving their programs.

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The High-Performance Entrepreneur : Golden Rules for Success in Today's World

Author: Subroto Bagchi
Published: 2006
Publisher: Penguin Books India

The author is a well respected personality in Indian IT industry. He is one of the founders of Mindtree.
This books gives several useful dos and don't s for entrepreneurs , starting , building and nurturing a successful company. This is certainly a "must read" for any budding entrepreneur who wants to build a high-performance organization. However the scope of the book is limited to author's views and experience with Mindtree which is an IT company.
If you want to read about different entrepreneurial view points, case studies drawn from several industries, I would recommend "Stay Hungry Stay Foolish" by Rashmi Bansal. This book has inspiring stories of 25 IIM Ahmedabad graduates who chose an entrepreneurial route to success.