Q A From his Silicon Valley outpost, Blank has continued to publish books about lean 22 startup methods as well, including the bestselling Startup Owner’s Manual (co-authored with Bob Dorf). In addition, Blank has been an author or co-author of eight Harvard Business Review articles, including a May 2013 cover article (‘Why the 23 Lean Start-Up Changes Everything’ ) and an article in HBR’s November–December 24 2017 print edition (‘When Founders Go Too Far’ ). He recently talked about his lean startup principles, the reasons why big, established companies, and government agencies need to adopt them, and the challenges they’ve had in trying to do so. TCS: Your ideas around the lean startup have jumped the tracks from the startup world to the big-company world and to the government. But before you talk about how large organizations are using them, take us back to the evolution of the ideas. Steve Blank: It started just from a very personal basis. I was a serial entrepreneur. I did eight startups in 21 years and retired in ‘99. When you’re a practitioner, you don’t have time to think about big picture stuff; you just do what you are told. If you’re lucky and good, you get to do it again. When I retired, I started thinking about the innovation of entrepreneurship. It struck th me that in the 20 century, startup investors treated startups like they were nothing more than smaller versions of large companies. It was a big idea. 22 Amazon, The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company, March 2012, accessed February 5, 2018, https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step-ebook/dp/ B009UMTMKS#reader_B009UMTMKS 23 Harvard Business Review, Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything, May 2013, accessed February 5, 2018, https://hbr.org/2013/05/why-the-lean-start-up-changes-everything 24 Harvard Business Review, When Founders Go Too Far, November-December 2017, accessed February 5, 2018, https://hbr.org/2017/11/when-founders-go-too-far