Steve Blank Memo From the Monastery

11 Responses

David Haddad, on February 4, 2010 at 6:42 am said:

Guthenberg’s mvp 🙂

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Matt Kaplan, on February 4, 2010 at 6:57 am said:

Steve,

This is very funny. I imagine at the time most Scribes saw Gutenberg’s invention as a threat to their jobs. The smart ones probably took advantage and opened up printing shops, while the dinosaurs stayed true to their craft and wanted nothing to do with it.

This is a good reminder of how important it is to stay focused on minimum viability and your target users. It’s easy to let outside forces and in some cases, the wrong audience entirely, drive your product decisions. Many times I’ve let gray-haired CEOs, board members, and other “smart” people dictate product features they felt were important based on their experience rather than staying true to the key innovation and user needs.

Incidentally, this prompted me to do a bit of research on Gutenberg. Ironically, although he was credited with inventing moveable type and the printing press, he ended bankrupt and exiled. I guess some things never change.

Regards,
Matt

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Ujwal, on February 4, 2010 at 8:54 am said:

Great way to put in your reply..

I thought about this in the context of flash…adobe and apple…

Best way to explain the way Adobe thinks of flash…and ipad’s entry..

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jorge, on February 4, 2010 at 9:06 am said:

Fire! Who needs it? I’m perfectly happy in this damp cave!

Actually, this is an interesting topic. Are there any writings from people around that time that detail what they really thought?

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Peter Patau, on February 4, 2010 at 9:43 am said:

Very funny, and love that final swipe at Adobe. Great post!

Really like the way this flawlessly sketches the larger context — that we’re in the midst of a historical seachange every bit as radical as the invention of movable type. Not just the iPad, but the entire modern process of unfettering text from the printed page. A revolution in human consciousness is under way and nobody knows where it’s going.

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Dave Broadwin, on February 5, 2010 at 8:35 am said:

Very clever post. It sheds more light on a topic we often discuss in my office: How difficult it is to identify winning ideas. It was not that long ago that a client and friend named Tom Burgess walked into my office with an idea about advertising and cell phones. What would your reaction have been if someone walked into your office with an idea for 140 character microblogging?

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SJ, on February 5, 2010 at 2:28 pm said:

I once read that Ford said something like: “If I had asked customers what they wanted they would have told me faster horses”.

Any comment on how that fits in with
your model?

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- steveblank, on February 5, 2010 at 3:35 pm said:
  
  Sj,
  Ford’s comment is a perfect fit if you believe you are creating a New Market, one which didn’t exist before. It doesn’t work when you’re an entering an existing market or resegmenting an existing one.
  
  If you haven’t already, its worth reviewing the concept of Market Type. Both in this post and in the Four Steps to the Epiphany.
  
  steve
  
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Jim Murphy, on February 6, 2010 at 8:01 am said:

Aldus and Adobe is one swell foop. 🙂

I’ll be pointing at this post for a while for people too busy to read Clayton Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma. http://bit.ly/dqxpCA

Thanks, Steve.

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- davidwlocke, on May 7, 2018 at 9:15 pm said:
  
  Read Foster’s “Innovation” instead. Christensen cited it. Foster’s disruptions are not competitive and birth a new category. Christensen’s stretches out the life of a near-death category.
  
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Bharath Krishnan, on February 12, 2010 at 7:46 am said:

That was fun! I wonder how we’d reflect on the paper versus epub/digital formats a few years from now.

Bharath

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