There is a reason you don't hear me often complain about lack of acknowledgment for my many contributions.
The reason is that I have led such a charmed and joyful life that to ask for recognition for my contributions would be sheer greed. I get an acknowledgment for a few of my contributions and that is frosting on the cake of a wonderful life.
So what is this stupid paragraph above about?
I had a wonderful dinner last week with an old and beloved Swedish friend, Sven Atterhed, who was the genius who brought knowledge of the Briarpatch to the world and build a global business consulting practice based on the innovative thinkers he met in the San Francisco Bay Area. He also brought me and my Briarpatch model to Sweden where it resulted in 4000 new small businesses in the 1980s.
At dinner, Sven told me about some of the people he was dealing with now. One of whom is Steve Blank who is given credit for being the father of the lean startup movement. The key person in the lean startup movement is Eric Ries.
The Wikipedia entry on the subject gives credit to everybody in history starting with Jesus, but not to me.
Weird, consider: in a book I co-authored with Salli Rasberry published in 1981, Honest Business, I have an entire chapter, (chapter 6) titled ‘Small Capital’. In it you will find the first paragraph: “When you start and run a business with the primary goal of serving people you will be more effective in starting with minimum capital”. I go on to describe examples of where it is best to start without any outside investment and how to do it.
Considering this book was published by Random House and considering that tens of thousands of people who came in contact with the Briarpatch and its progeny.... I have no doubt I deserve some credit for the lean startup movement.
Regardless of giving me credit. If you plan to start a business I have always given the same advice: ‘make the product or service work first, even if you have to do it at night while working at a daytime job at Starbucks, then get customers before you actually quit your daytime job and start building the business.
Thirty-five years of preaching this, should get me a tiny bit of recognition. Maybe?