Innovation and Lean Startups in the World’s Largest Bureaucracy: DEF2013 by Captain Michael Christman, Marine Corps Gazette blog.
In his 2011 work The Lean Startup, serial entrepreneur Eric Ries describes a method for successful entrepreneurship that stresses the importance of rapid iteration over extensive planning, adaptive learning over causal logic, and getting an idea into the hands of end users well before it is completely validated. While this technique was considered innovative and ground breaking in the business world, Ries’ approach to problem solving should seem very familiar to Marine leaders.The oft quoted mantra “the 80% solution executed violently and on time is better than the 100% solution executed too late” is Reis’s theory in action. The best planners and leaders understand that while a well thought out scheme of maneuver is the first step to any operation, no plan survives contact with the enemy. The ability to adapt to a changing situation (or in business speak to “iterate and learn”) is just as important as the ability to create the “perfect plan”. The business world and the Marine Corps are closer than both would like to admit, and we can certainly learn from each other...