Steve Blank: Building a Lean Startup

Steve Blank, a professor at Stanford and entrepreneur himself has been one of the principal developers of the Lean Startup movement - a movement that fundamentally changes the static business plan that assumes we know far more about the future and market reactions than we do, and instead focus on the validation of a given business model.

From Wikipedia: "The Lean Startup approach relies on validated learning, scientific experimentation, and iterative product releases to shorten product development cycles, measure progress, and gain valuable customer feedback."

Pretty much invaluable to anyone interested in starting a business, new product or service, I'd highly recommend taking his free online course on Udacity, and reading up on the idea here (HBR) and here (SteveBlank) with the Harvard Business Review now offering free reprints of their May 2013 cover article.

Update: Great infographic of the process (SachaChua)