Entrepreneurs always pitch their idea as 'the X of Y', so this is going to be 'the Microsoft of food.' And yet disruptive innovations usually don't have that character. Most of the time, if something seems like a good idea, it probably isn't.

Vanity metrics wreak havoc because they prey on a weakness of the human mind.

I was finally ready to turn to the last resort: talking to customers. Armed.

The CEO and VP of product, instead of building their business, are engaged in the drudgery of solving just one customer’s problem. Instead of marketing themselves to millions, they sold themselves to one.

Cycle after cycle, the team is working hard, but the business is not seeing results. Managers trained in a traditional model draw the logical conclusion: our team is not working hard, not working effectively, or not working efficiently.

It is insufficient to exhort workers to try harder. Our current problems are caused by trying too hard – at the wrong things.

They had “achieved failure” – successfully, faithfully, and rigorously executing a plan that turned out to have been utterly flawed.

They will ask to go back to the old way of working, in which they had the opportunity to “stay efficient” by working in larger batches and passing work between departments.

This is an important rule: a good design is one that changes customer behavior for the better.

Every extra feature is a form of waste, and if we delay the test for these extra features, it comes with a tremendous potential cost in terms of learning and cycle time.