Authors Of The Lean Entrepreneur Hold Lean Innovation Workshop for USC Stevens Center for Innovation in New Ventures and Alliances

Sometimes, the only way to move forward is as a leader, not a follower. From an economic perspective, those who feel that compulsion are entrepreneurs. These men and women face many adversities on their way to success. The "Lean Startup" method was developed by Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Eric Ries, specifically to help business owners deal with these issues and persevere, no matter the industry, in spite of the state of the market.

Patrick Vlaskovits, Lean Startup leader and co-author of the forthcoming book, The Lean Entreprenur, says that simply having the entrepreneurial drive isn't enough:

"My co-author, Brant Cooper, and I believe there are many future entrepreneurial visionaries out there, but 'The Good Idea' alone is not enough. A strong vision has to be married to market reality. That is the story of The Lean Entrepreneur: How one goes about kicking off a new venture and innovating by being data-driven, customer-centric and agile."

In addition to writing together, Vlaskovits and Cooper also do workshops as Moves The Needle Group, introducing current and potential entrepreneurs to the Lean Startup movement. A main focus of the workshops is teaching these business owners how to be realists; to draw from empirical data and scientific experimentation. The Lean Startup values customer feedback and works in shorter development cycles, fine tuning services to maximize customer satisfaction without the need for a large initial investment or expensive product launches.

Moves The Needle has done over 100 workshops around the globe, working with Lean Startup Circles in various cities, companies in need of help, and many different universities. Recently, in conjunction with the USC Stevens Center for Innovation, Cooper and Vlaskovits held a seminar on the Los Angeles campus. Attendees were provided with a digital copy of Cooper and Vlaskovits' first book, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development. This particular workshop centered around customer development, market segmentation, and other lean startup techniques.

Business owners everywhere are learning the value of true realism in the marketplace. Workshop by workshop, Cooper and Vlaskovits are changing the economic landscape. Expect to hear their names a whole lot more when their book, The Lean Entrepreneur, releases in February 2013.

To pre-order their map to success go to LeanEntrepreneur.co, and head to MovesTheNeedle.com to schedule Brant and Patrick for a Lean Startup workshop.