What Does Eric Ries Say Business School Students Miss About Startups?

Eric Ries tells James Beshara that students he teaches keep asking why he never mentioned pivots, even though pivots are most of what he talks about. Entrepreneurship, he says, is learning by doing. He uses The Inner Game of Tennis: you cannot learn the game from a book, you have to swing the racket. Books and theory still help, but only when they meet lived experience. Otherwise they do not change how you act or help you find anything new. Ries says he can describe the startup roller coaster calmly only because he has ridden the climb himself, not because someone explained it to him.