We spoke with entrepreneur, author and Lean Startup/Customer Development evangelist, Patrick Vlaskovits, about entrepreneurship, startups, and how any innovator in any industry can apply the lean principles.

Patrick Vlaskovits is an entrepreneur, author, and Lean Startup/Customer Development evangelist. His forthcoming book, The Lean Entrepreneur, co-authored with Brant Cooper, teaches readers how to immediately apply the iterative principles of the lean method no matter what the size, stage or industry of the business.

Patrick and Brant also authored The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development, has founded a number of startups, and is a co-organizer of the very popular LeanLA meetup. He can be followed on Twitter at @pv.

Tell me about your upcoming book: The Lean Entrepreneur

Sure. The Lean Entrepreneur is about a few things. Firstly, we distill the lexicon of Lean Startup (and similar iterative, customer centric, data-driven) methods down to a way any innovator can use them. Secondly, we call out the fact that we are at the beginning of a tremendous wave of innovation that is already changing the world i.e. mobile devices, 3D printing, crowdfunding — a lot of people are talking about this phenomenon and its implications, but no one has nailed it…yet.

When we talk about the lean startup method, it’s often in the context of technology startups. But our book can be used by almost any business and industry. There are a lot of disruptive things happening right now and we’re living in an amazing age. Our book essentially serves as a field guide to navigate this new environment. I’m not using the phrase ‘new environment’ in a casually hyperbolic way – I really mean it.

The disruptive forces unleashed by the Internet and mobile devices are changing the way we work, do business, and even the way we think. These changes are increasing the proportion of the US workforce that are free agents and working for themselves. Co-working spaces, such as Coloft in Santa Monica, are reshaping cities. The cost of doing a startup is cheaper than ever, and there are more and more people trying to take a crack at it. Crowd funding (such as what you interviewed Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky about) is allowing entrepreneurs to tap giant new revenue streams. If we zoom out 100,000 ft., you get this realization that there is something big happening here. But it’s not like Brant and I are the only ones to have “discovered” this. Others, such as Seth Godin and the futurist Robert Turcek, have been talking about this for a while. And it’s in that context that we think The Lean Entrepreneur is really valuable. It serves as a field guide for innovating in this new space.

So what is the lean method in a nutshell?

The basic formula is this:

1) Test your assumptions.

2) Get out of the building

3) Iterate on what you learned.

But really it’s:

0) There are no rules.

1) Test your assumptions.

2) Get out of the building

3) Iterate on what you learned.

Were you able to use the Lean method in writing your book?

Good question. Although our first book, The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development, was self-published, this current book, The Lean Entrepreneur, is being published the more traditional way by Wiley. However, what’s unique about our process this time is that we using LA-based startup Invested.in to help fund the pre-sales campaign. Our pre-purchasers help us field test many of the elements in this book, such as the visuals and writing. We’ve got FAKEGRIMLOCK, who is very talented startup artist, doing the images for our book. We then send the images to our pre-purchasers and have them comment. We want to make sure we’re communicating the right thing. We also field-test some of the analogies we use in the book. For example, I have this analogy how properly segmenting your market is a lot like fishing. Testing it prior to publishing is allowing us to see what parts of the analogy move the needle with the reader. This is a very effective de-risking tool.

So for what type of businesses does the lean method work well?

It is really effective across the innovation spectrum from sustaining to disruptive.

That being said, it is most effective with true disruptive innovation, where you’re creating a new market. This is distinct from ‘sustaining innovation’ where you’re improving on an existing concept for an existing market and where there are fewer unknowns. The lean method, customer development, and the agile method, makes sense when the market you’re working in is uncertain. In that environment, the 40-page business plan that we’re taught in business school is useless. Once your product is out in front of people, they react differently and you always have a surprise segment that uses it. This is where the pivot comes in. The pivot is realigning your vision with the market pull. You’ve learned something about the market, tested your assumptions, and adjusted your course to double down on what you’ve learned. Now, you have to be careful because if you’re changing company strategy without having it based on such learnings, that is not a pivot. That’s just flailing!

Pivots are not just a tech startup phenomenon. For example, Katy Perry pivoted from being a Christian soft-rock singer where she didn’t get much traction to being a mainstream sex pop princess with a completely different look and value prop. Pivots have always existed and you can see them in all sorts of different spheres.

Do pivots work as well in larger organizations?

Well, the lean manufacturing method actually came out of Toyota’s production systems, so yes! But, the way I look at it is that it is a cultural technology and you have to make it your own. It’s about the principles and not the tactics. Don’t just follow “the rules” blindly because you heard that they’re important. Apply the principles, make them your own and contextualize them.

We’ve seen some big companies like Intuit are using it, as is the UK telecom, O2. Interestingly, O2 doesn’t call it the ‘lean startup method’, but essentially it’s what it was. They’re trying to re-engineer themselves around the principles. It can be contextualized to work in larger organizations, but clearly the lone entrepreneur is much more nimble and can change tack in a matter of minutes.

How close do entrepreneurs need to stick to the lean rules?

Well, the problem is that a lot of people want a step-by-step guide. But the deeper you go into this, the more you learn that there is no linear approach. There really are no rules other than to get out of the building, test your assumptions, and iterate on your learnings.

An interesting story is of Picasso. As a child, it was very clear that he was a child prodigy with exceptional talents. He mastered the rules of oil painting very early and that’s why he was able to break the rules and pivot into cubism. Prior to that he was a starving artist doing photo-realistic art. But through that, he had mastered all the old rules, and once mastered, he could let them go. Entrepreneurship is the same. You need to conceptualize all of the rules, and the best entrepreneurs then realize that there actually are no rules and then let them go.