Steve Blank

A retired eight-time serial entrepreneur-turned-educator and author, Steve Blank is the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship. Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement, he’s changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Steve is the author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, The Startup Owner’s Manual -- and his May 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story defined the Lean Startup movement.

He teaches at Stanford, Columbia, and Berkeley; and created the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps -- now the standard for science commercialization in the U.S. His Hacking for Defense class at Stanford is revolutionizing how the U.S. defense and intelligence community can deploy innovation with speed and urgency. Together with its sister classes, Hacking for Diplomacy, Hacking for Energy and Hacking for Impact, the program represents a new platform for national service.

Steve blogs at www.steveblank.com.

Posts by Steve Blank

News

Born Global or Die Local – Building a Regional Startup Playbook

Entrepreneurship is everywhere, but everywhere isn’t a level playing field. What’s the playbook for your region or country to make it so? ———- Scalable startups are on a trajectory for a billion dollar market cap. They grow into companies that define an industry and create jobs.  Not all start ups want to go in that direction […]

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Why translational medicine will never be the same

Startup Founder Testimonial: Vitruvian from LaunchPad Central on Vimeo. There have been 2 or 3 courses in my entire education that have changed the way I think. This is one of those. For the past three years the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps has been teaching our nations best scientists how to build a Lean Startup. Close […]

Diagnostics

I-Corps @ NIH – Pivoting the Curriculum

We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum. We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. — Over the last three years the Lean LaunchPad class has started to replace the last century’s “how to write a business plan” classes as the foundation for entrepreneurial […]

News

Why Do Corporate Acquisitions of Startups Fail?

For decades large companies have gone shopping in Silicon Valley for startups. Lately the pressure of continuous disruption has forced them to step up the pace. More often than not the results of these acquisitions are disappointing. What can companies learn from others’ failed efforts to integrate startups into large companies? The answer – there are two types of integration strategies, […]

Devices & Diagnostics

Is This Startup Ready for Investment?

Since 2005 startup accelerators have provided cohorts of startups with mentoring, pitch practice and product focus. However, accelerator Demo Days are a combination of graduation ceremony and pitch contest, with the uncomfortable feel of a swimsuit competition. Other than “I’ll know it when I see it,” there’s no formal way for an investor attending Demo […]

Lean launchpad and healthcare startups: Sometimes teams win when they fail

This post is part of our series on the National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean LaunchPad class in Life Science and Health Care at UCSF. Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them.  The class had 1,145 engagements with instructors […]

Diagnostics

Doctors, researchers and investigators get out of the lab,hospital and talk to customers: Lessons learned in diagnostics

This post is part of our series on the National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean LaunchPad class in Life Science and Health Care at UCSF. Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them. The class had 1,145 engagements with instructors […]

Lean launchpad and life science entrepreneurs: Lessons learned in therapeutics

This post is part of our series on the National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean LaunchPad class in Life Science and Health Care at UCSF. Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them. The class had 1,145 engagements with instructors […]

Health IT

Lessons learned in digital health

This post is part of our series on the National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean LaunchPad class in Life Science and Health Care at UCSF. Part 1: issues in the therapeutics drug discovery pipeline Part 2: medical devices and digital health Part 3: described what we’re going to do about it. Part 4: This Will Save […]