Products a start-up builds are really experimentsโฆLearning about how to build a sustainable business is the outcome of those experiments [which follow] a three-step process: Build, measure, learn.โ โ[A startup is] โฆ an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
Eric RiesScience and vision are not opposites or even at odds. They need each other. I sometimes hear other startup folks say something along the lines of: 'If entrepreneurship was a science, then anyone could do it.' I'd like to point out that even science is a science, and still very few people can do it, let alone do it well.
Eric RiesYou know how people always talk about how vision is the key to entrepreneurship and perseverance and really seeing what other people don't see? We can actually redeem a fair amount of that folk wisdom.
Eric RiesThere was a study done in the early 20th century of all the entrepreneurs who entered the automobile industry around the same time as Henry Ford; there were something like 500 automotive companies that got funded, had the internal combustion engine, had the technology, and had the vision. Sixty percent of them folded within a couple of years.
Eric Ries