Jurgen Appelo is a top keynote speaker and writer from the Netherlands. His new book “Start up, scale up, screw up” is a helpful tool book for a new generation of founders. It dives deep into the art of entrepreneurship and how to grow your business lean in an agile environment.
Why is being agile so important for a start up?
Jurgen says that, being agile is not a goal. It is a means to an end, for a world that is thriving constantly. As a founder and entrepreneur, you should always develop new ideas till they don’t work anymore. The book delivers some clarity through a holistic picture on lean entrepreneurship.
He also refers to the innovators dilemma and how whole industries get disrupted by new business models. The music industry for example was totally disrupted by the invention of Spotify and similar companies. Established businesses are often pinned down to just being profitable. They forget to invest in new business models and ideas to solve the same problem in a different way.
3 keys to solve the innovators dilemma
Your business should always be a family of business models. It is crucial to have different frameworks for different business models and each unit should have a different structure.
What are your 3 favorite tools from your book?
What is your last advice for starting entrepreneurs?
Allow things to grow without all things working. He said that, “we moved from something small that didn’t work to something big that didn’t work by adding unnecessary features.”
It is impossible to make a complex big system work in the beginning. Keep staying small and lean. When you have something small that works, keep growing it.
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