Running Lean  
(10th Anniversary Edition)

Time flies. It’s been ten years since the last edition of Running Lean. Since then, I’ve spent thousands of hours training and coaching hundreds of product teams, coaches, and stakeholders worldwide. My goal was to further test and refine the systematic step-by-step process first laid out in the book – moving beyond my products and across a diverse set of products and industries.

While the book answered some questions, I was faced with a barrage of challenging follow-on questions like:

  • How can I get my investors (and stakeholders) to buy into my idea with just a Lean Canvas?
  • How do I run problem interviews around desire-driven products like video games or fashion?
  • How do I apply Running Lean to non-tech products and services?

The new edition addresses all these questions and more.

Along the way, I developed additional business modeling tools, newer and better validation strategies, and more practical techniques synthesizing concepts from various methodologies and frameworks, including Lean Startup, Design Thinking, Business Model Design, jobs-to-be-done, Systems Thinking, Behavior Design, and many more.

I found that to achieve breakthrough innovation under conditions of extreme uncertainty, one shouldn’t limit themself to just one framework but rather use the best from all of them.

While these frameworks overlap, each has a specific superpower that makes it stand out above the others. I’ve curated these superpowers into a new framework of frameworks (the Continuous Innovation Framework) that is laid out in this book.

In addition to the Lean Canvas, the book also covers:

  • the traction roadmap for better idea sizing,
  • the customer factory metrics model for better risk prioritization, and
  • the customer forces behavior model for better understanding your customers.

In this 10th anniversary edition of Running Lean, you’ll find:

  • More effective stress testing techniques for shaping your early business model,
  • A completely revised problem discovery interview script for uncovering real customer problems worth solving,
  • A battle-tested process for building products you know customers want and don’t just hope they want.

If you've read this far, you're probably thinking that this edition isn't just a minor lift of the last edition. And you're right. The third edition packs in 120 more pages, and aside from a few paragraphs, this book is a complete rewrite.

Here's what one of our long-time practitioners and coach had to say after an early-access review:  

To me, this could easily be a new book, rather than a new edition. At the very least, it's so different that just another edition doesn't do it justice. I was planning on a quick run-through but it really needs a decent amount of examination.
- Ross McKay - Professional Mentor

And Ross would know, as he's apparently made everyone read the previous edition :)

Running Lean - 10th Anniversary Edition

My Personal Why

When people tell me they wish they had read Running Lean sooner, I reply: "Me too." I've made every mistake in the book, and I used the last edition to clarify my thinking. This edition is about refining that thinking.

I wrote the last edition of Running Lean for myself.
The third edition is for you – the entrepreneur.

My mission with Running Lean (and my company: LEANSTACK) is democratizing how entrepreneurship is taught and practiced. In short, I'd like to help the next generation of entrepreneurs at least avoid making the same mistakes.

Life’s too short to build something nobody wants.

I hope you’ll consider picking up a copy: http://runlean.ly/3e

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