Steve Blank Podcast show

Steve Blank Podcast

Summary: Steve Blank, eight-time entrepreneur and now a business school professor at Stanford, Columbia and Berkeley, shares his hard-won wisdom as he pioneers entrepreneurship as a management science, combining Customer Development, Business Model Design and Agile Development. The conclusion? Startups are simply not small versions of large companies! Startups are actually temporary organizations designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.

Join Now to Subscribe to this Podcast
  • Visit Website
  • RSS
  • Artist: Steve Blank
  • Copyright: Copyright 2010 by Albedrio Partners, Inc.

Podcasts:

 CoinOut Gets Coin In | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:06:35

It’s always fun to see what happens to my students after they leave class. Jeff Witten started CoinOut four years ago in my Columbia University 5-day Lean LaunchPad class. CoinOut eliminates the hassle of getting a pocket full of loose change from merchants by allowing you to put it in a digital wallet. Jeff just appeared on Shark Tank and the Sharks funded him. We just caught up and I got to do a bit of customer discovery on Jeff’s entrepreneurial journey to date.

 Innovation at Speed – when you have 2 million employees | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:08:59

Success no longer goes to the country that develops a new fighting technology first, but rather to the one that better integrates it and adapts its way of fighting…Our response will be to prioritize speed of delivery, continuous adaptation, and frequent modular upgrades. We must not accept cumbersome approval chains, wasteful applications of resources in uncompetitive space, or overly risk-averse thinking that impedes change. If you read these quotes, you’d think they were from a CEO who just took over a company facing disruption from agile startups and a changing environment. And you’d be right. Although in this case the CEO is the Secretary of Defense. And his company has 2 million employees.

 Janesville – A Story About the Rest of America | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:08:00

I just read book – Janesville – that reminded me again of life outside the bubble. Janesville, tells the story of laid-off factory workers of a General Motors factory that’s never going to reopen. It’s a story about a Midwest town and the type of people I knew and worked alongside.

 Why GE’s Jeff Immelt Lost His Job – Disruption and Activist Investors | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:11:55

Jeff Immelt ran GE for 16 years. He radically transformed the company from a classic conglomerate that did everything to one that focused on its core industrial businesses. He sold off slower-growth, low-tech, and nonindustrial businesses — financial services, media, entertainment, plastics, and appliances. He doubled GE’s investment in R&D.

 The Red Queen Problem – Innovation in the DoD and Intelligence Community | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:17:36

“…it takes all the running you can do to keep in the same place. ” - The Red Queen Alice in Wonderland Innovation, disruption, accelerators, have all become urgent buzzwords in the Department of Defense and Intelligence community. They are a reaction to the “red queen problem” but aren’t actually solving the problem. Here’s why.

 Office of Naval Research (ONR) Goes Lean | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:09:11

The Office of Naval Research (ONR) has been one of the largest supporters of innovation in the U.S. Now they are starting to use the Lean Innovation process (see here and here) to turn ideas into solutions. The result will be defense innovation with speed and urgency.

 Removing the Roadblocks to Corporate Innovation – When Theory Meets Practice | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:10:05

Innovation theory and innovation in practice are radically different. Here are some simple tools to get your company’s innovation pipeline through the obstacles it will encounter.

 How companies strangle innovation – and how you can get it right | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:15:13

I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” They accomplished their goal, but at a huge, unanticipated cost: the processes and committees they designed ended up strangling innovation. There’s a much better way.

 Working Outside the Tech Bubble | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:05:52

Annual note to self – most of the world exists outside the tech bubble. —– We have a summer home in New England in a semi-rural area, just ~10,000 people in town, with a potato farm across the street. Drive down the road and you can see the tall stalks of corn waving on other farms. Most people aren’t in tech or law or teaching in universities; they fall solidly in what is called working-class. They work as electricians, carpenters, plumbers, in hospitals, restaurants, as clerks, office managers, farmers, etc. They have solid middle-class values of work, family, education and country – work hard, own a home, have a secure job, and save for their kids’ college and their retirement.

 National Security Innovation just got a major boost in Washington | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:11:24

Two good things just happened in Washington – these days that should be enough of a headline. First, someone ideal was just appointed to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense. Second, funding to teach our Hacking for Defense class across the country just was added to the National Defense Authorization Act. Interestingly enough, both events are about how the best and brightest can serve their country – and are testament to the work of two dedicated men.

 Why good people leave large tech companies | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:08:41

If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry I was visiting with an ex-student who’s now the CFO of a large public tech company. The company is still one of the hottest places to work in tech. They make hardware with a large part of their innovation in embedded software and services. The CFO asked me to stay as one of the engineering directors came in for a meeting. I wish I hadn’t.

 Why a Company Can’t “Be More Like a Startup” | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:09:07

As more and more companies face disruption from globalization, new technology, and startups that have more capital than the incumbents, the continuing cry from Wall Street investors is, “Why can’t companies be as innovative as startups?” Here’s one reason why: Startups can do anything. Companies can only do what’s legal.

 Tesla Lost $700 Million Last Year, So Why Is Tesla’s Valuation $60 Billion? | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:06:19

Automobile manufacturers shipped 88 million cars in 2016. Tesla shipped 76,000. Yet Wall Street values Tesla higher than any other U.S. car manufacturer. What explains this more than 1,000 to 1 discrepancy in valuation? The future.

 Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2017 – Lessons Learned Presentations | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:10:06

We just finished our second Hacking for Defense class at Stanford. Eight teams presented their Lessons Learned presentations. Hacking for Defense is a battle-tested problem-solving methodology that runs at Silicon Valley speed. It combines the same Lean Startup Methodology used by the National Science Foundation to commercialize science, with the rapid problem sourcing and curation methodology developed on the battlefields in Afghanistan and Iraq by Colonel Pete Newell and the US Army’s Rapid Equipping Force.

 Innovation, Change and the Rest of Your Life | File Type: audio/mpeg | Duration: 00:21:18

I gave the Alumni Day talk at U.C. Santa Cruz and had a few things to say about innovation...Even though I live just up the coast, I’ve never had the opportunity to start a talk by saying “Go Banana Slugs.” I’m honored for the opportunity to speak here today. We’re standing 15 air miles away from the epicenter of technology innovation. The home of some of the most valuable and fastest growing companies in the world. I’ve spent my life in innovation, eight startups in 21 years, and the last 15 years in academia teaching it.

Comments

Login or signup comment.