The pursuit of innovation is inherently risky. Innovation is about creating value by doing new things, which implies a built-in risk that the new thing won’t work as well as the old thing. For me, this is a helpful connection to keep in mind when I’m evaluating or working with…

The other day I wrote that startups are learning machines, and shared some of the most common techniques I see startups using to learn. (Dave Ambrose reminded me of a great quote from Josh Kopelman, from his interview with Patrick OShaughnessy: “A startup’s job is to learn.” Yep!) That post…

The best early-stage startups are optimized for learning — about their customers, whether their product will work, how to get people to use it, etc. Oh sure, there’s plenty of other stuff that startups have to do. …

When I’m doing a live video keynote or facilitating an online workshop, I want my video and audio to be better than what I get from a typical webcam and headset microphone. If you’re a speaker, teacher, or facilitator, you probably want the same thing. A relatively simple tech setup…

Two and a half years ago, when we published Sprint, I thought to myself: “Cool, mission accomplished.” The Design Sprint recipe — based on Jake’s work at Google and our years of experimentation together at Google Ventures — was out in the world, described in enough detail that anyone could…