Ie 466

THE PennSYLVANIA State University

Department of Industrial & Manufacturing Engineering

IE466: Concurrent Engineering

Questions Due 09/05 Name:______Adrian Herry_________________

Answer the following questions while watching the 1 hour 26 minute video, “Why Accountants Don’t Run Startups,” available online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1CGPdJQ_oo

Who is Steve Blank? How does he establish his credentials? Is it effective?

Steve Blank is an entrepreneur from Silicon Valley in California. He has worked 30 years in the high technology industry. He worked with eight startup companies and his parents ran a grocery store in New York City. He is also recognized for developing the Customer Development methodology. He wrote a book about startups called “The Four steps to Epiphany” which was very effective and influential.

What do the words entrepreneur and start-up mean in Silicon Valley? How does that compare to how the words are traditionally used elsewhere in the U.S.?

In Silicon Valley, the word startup and entrepreneur mean lifestyle business while the traditional definition of startup and entrepreneur is a person who organizes and runs a business (small business) by taking on great financial reason.

What is the difference between a business plan and a business model? What is a “pivot”?

A business model describes how a company creates, delivers and captures value or how a company makes money. Any business plan can be described in 9 building blocks such as customer segments, customer relation, channel, revenue stream, and cost structure. A business plan is a plan where the business owner makes hypothesis of selling, marketing, revenue, market size, customer and all other important information that are needed for the business. A pivot is a fundamental insight of the lean startup. According to Steve Blank, a pivot is a substantive change to one or more of the 9 business model components. The pivot is the...