Some Videos from the 2012 #LeanStartup Conference

It's awesome that Eric Ries puts the video content from The Lean Startup Conference online each year. He's just uploaded some videos to his YouTube channel, with more to come (including video of my “Ignite” session talk on Lean Healthcare Design).

Here is the playlist with all of the 2012 talks.

It's all worth checking out, but some of my particular favorite sessions include:

• Todd Park, the U.S. “chief technology officer” on Lean Startup principles in government
• Dan Milstein on “The 5 Whys”
• Steve Blank, on teaching entrepreneurship

See the videos below:

Todd Park

Todd gave an incredibly energetic talk about the use of Lean Startup principles in the federal government. Todd said,  the most exciting entrepreneurial experience I've had is with the federal government (he says “it sounds crazy right?”). He also talked about how the federal government is making a lot of data available for  entrepreneurs  to use, as “you've already paid for it.” I'm generally cynical about government, but Todd actually made me think some good things can happen in terms of taking time out of government processes.

Dan Milstein

Dan talked about the use of “5 whys” problem solving methodology and was particularly good in talking about how we can't just blame people for problems and we need to eliminate shame from problem solving and improvement, moving from emotion to logic. He talked about “F.A.E.” or Fundamental Attribution Error and how humans underestimate the power of the situation when they're not in it (so we too easily to blame individuals).

Steve Blank

The professor and author, Steve Blank, talks about how to teach entrepreneurship, joking that “Entrepreneurship education is like a priest teaching you sex.” Another funny line, “the only people who require 5-year plans were venture capitalists and the Soviet Union… and we know how well that turned out.”

But, entrepreneurship can be taught as a methodology and profession… “we now know how to make startups fail less.”

We need to know and teach:

1. What is a business model (business model canvas)
2. A process to test hypotheses in our business model (customer development)
3. An  iterative  and incremental engineering process to build the process (agile engineering)

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