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舊金山的Warfield劇場隔壁是傳說中的搖滾圣殿，多年來經(jīng)歷過鮑勃·迪倫，感恩而死樂隊，還有槍炮與玫瑰。走進啤酒味飄香的大廳，坐進空曠大廳陳舊的椅子里，眼前是衣冠楚楚的商業(yè)精英們大談創(chuàng)業(yè)，似乎有些格格不入。

演講者們觀點不算犀利，不過提倡的觀點相當類似。零售商諾德斯特姆負責用戶體驗的副總裁喬迪·舒克娜非常熱衷“顧客第一的思路”，還有“緊跟變化，勇敢走出舒適區(qū)的能力”。咨詢公司Strategyzer鼓勵客戶開展 “創(chuàng)新短跑”活動，亞力克斯·奧斯特瓦爾德敦促各公司建立“21世紀組織架構”。連聯(lián)邦政府代表也掌握了新鮮術語。美國國際發(fā)展署前創(chuàng)新主管安·梅·張就警告非營利機構，不要用“虛榮指標”衡量成功，還稱“擴張?zhí)臁睍斐删薮箫L險。

這場“布道大會”去年11月舉辦，演講者有個共同特征：都是《精益創(chuàng)業(yè)》一書作者埃里克·萊斯的支持者。這本書掀起一場積極的運動，本次論壇就由忠實粉絲舉辦。論壇主要討論的話題包括，最核心概念“最簡化可行產(chǎn)品”，簡稱“MVP”，意思是企業(yè)應該用最快，成本也最低的產(chǎn)品測試市場。另一個概念是“轉向”，意思是遭遇挫折時業(yè)務應轉向新方向。這些概念都來自萊斯2011年寫的書，英語版已賣出超過百萬本，已被翻譯成另外30種語言。

萊斯對創(chuàng)業(yè)圈的影響可謂巨大。各處的創(chuàng)業(yè)者都接受了他提出的概念和建議策略，包括與用戶一同測試假設，判斷創(chuàng)新成功與否時應跳出收入和市場份額等會計原則?！昂翢o疑問，過去十年他對創(chuàng)業(yè)公司的思路產(chǎn)生了巨大的影響，”在斯坦福商學院教授創(chuàng)業(yè)課程的羅布·西格爾表示。

39歲的大師本人也參與了論壇，他在劇場深處一個綠色房間里主持論壇。交流者還包括國家安全局的團隊，該團隊也因踐行他提出的概念獲得成效，是個有關核密碼的項目。他跟賈斯汀·羅森斯坦親切擁抱，據(jù)說羅森斯坦（自稱）發(fā)明了Facebook上的“點贊”按鈕，現(xiàn)在負責一家名叫Asana的協(xié)作軟件創(chuàng)業(yè)公司。對萊斯來說，論壇更多出于感情，而不是為了盈利。他留著絡腮胡，臉龐特別像演員塞斯·羅根。但在他一人開創(chuàng)的咨詢、出版和演講事業(yè)王國里，論壇的作用還是巨大的。

如今，萊斯咨詢過的公司已數(shù)以百計。雖然他最大的關注點仍是創(chuàng)業(yè)公司，但《精益創(chuàng)業(yè)》發(fā)行后的幾年里，他越發(fā)意識到業(yè)界對相關概念的理解太窄。他表示，只要提供適當?shù)沫h(huán)境，再古板的公司也可以鼓勵創(chuàng)新。去年10月，萊斯的第二本書《創(chuàng)業(yè)之道》中就直接點名大公司，特別是通用電氣。通用電氣也是最早聘請萊斯當顧問，隨后大規(guī)模推廣其理念。

萊斯并沒有主動找大公司，其實大公司在過去某些時候曾充滿創(chuàng)新精神，但往往變得官僚主義，注重流程且厭惡風險。大公司找到萊斯時，他發(fā)現(xiàn)還是有些事可以做。“有幾年我過著雙面生活，”他說?！耙幻媸歉晒ζ髽I(yè)家談，他們想在擴大規(guī)模的同時保留創(chuàng)業(yè)公司的DNA。與此同時另一群人則拼命想找回失去的創(chuàng)業(yè)精神DNA。”

萊斯按照自己提出的建議，不斷測試假設，不斷問問題，終于找到了商業(yè)世界普適的創(chuàng)新方法。他的想法看起來有些直接，寫下來感覺有點太明顯，但就像其他好老師一樣，他能將觀點解釋得很有說服力，在發(fā)表演講、談話和提供指導時能讓人覺得很有緊迫感。他還走出大膽一步，開創(chuàng)了自己的公司，目標是打造新股票交易所，解決華爾街的短期主義傾向問題，也為他熱愛的創(chuàng)業(yè)公司創(chuàng)始人們提供服務。看來萊斯真是少有能切實踐行理念的好老師，他一直努力提升課程對各種領導者的價值。

精益創(chuàng)業(yè)論壇之后幾天，萊斯一直在舊金山家附近公寓里寫作。此處環(huán)境郁郁蔥蔥，房間里墻壁和沙發(fā)都是白色，是個很方便的隱居之處，也很適合思考。萊斯很需要安靜的環(huán)境。去年深秋前，他為了宣傳新書去了紐約、費城、波士頓，然后又去紐約，還有洛杉磯。之后一周他計劃在辛辛那提的寶潔公司開設工作組，之后飛去倫敦。

他從沒想到需求如此之多?！毒鎰?chuàng)業(yè)》一書出版后，萊斯收到雪片般的邀請，他頻頻出席演講，提供咨詢和指導，這也是他之前從未想過要從事的職業(yè)?！熬瓦@么發(fā)生了，”他說。他還表示，接受人們花錢聽他介紹自己思想這個事都花了點時間。萊斯由此搖身一變，躋身硅谷杰出的創(chuàng)業(yè)大師?！斑@樣的個人介紹可能不太好，”他邊說邊思考自己言論的影響，“但我其實對商業(yè)沒那么大興趣，至少沒有談話對象們興趣大。我其實不喜歡經(jīng)商?！彼f時任通用電氣總裁的杰弗里·伊梅爾特曾經(jīng)問他，如果讓他掌管通用電氣會怎樣?！拔艺f，‘我會死的。10分鐘都撐不了。這份工作會壓垮我?！?

萊斯更喜歡的是寫代碼，還有開班公司。他在圣地亞哥長大，雙親都是物理學家和教授。（他有兩個妹妹，一位是精神科醫(yī)生，另一位是聯(lián)邦檢察官。萊斯的妻子塔拉·莫爾是斯坦福大學MBA，職業(yè)是人生導師，也是一位作家?！拔沂羌易謇锏暮隈R，”他打趣說，“家里感恩節(jié)聚會時我總是唯一一個沒有高等學歷的人。”）他在耶魯學習哲學，后來改為計算機科學，輟學創(chuàng)業(yè)后慘遭失敗，后來返回學校完成了學業(yè)。畢業(yè)后他迅速去硅谷再次創(chuàng)業(yè)，但還是失敗。

后來他成立了IMVU公司，也開始研究后來變?yōu)榫鎰?chuàng)業(yè)思路的理論。IMVU經(jīng)歷了多次“轉向”，目前主要為社交網(wǎng)絡制作虛擬形象，公司產(chǎn)品是一款處理軟件，出了名的迭代迅速，人們稱贊其開發(fā)“敏捷”。萊斯和聯(lián)合創(chuàng)始人威爾·哈維有自己的導師，是加州伯克利分校教授史蒂夫·布蘭克，他也要繼續(xù)寫創(chuàng)業(yè)方面的暢銷書《四步走向創(chuàng)業(yè)頓悟》?！懊恐芩奈覀兌紩鳥ART”——灣區(qū)的主要交通線——“去伯克利聽他講課，”哈維回憶說。

諷刺的是，雖然后來萊斯在創(chuàng)業(yè)圈地位崇高，但他的創(chuàng)業(yè)生涯不算多輝煌。IMVU如今仍是私有狀態(tài)，盈利性收入不過6000萬美元，按硅谷的標準不算什么。2008年萊斯離職，先在風投公司凱鵬華盈待了一陣，后來專心寫博客，內(nèi)容是他對如何創(chuàng)業(yè)和擴大規(guī)模的觀察。博客越發(fā)受歡迎，之后他開始寫書，轉向演講和咨詢事業(yè)。之后大公司開始找上門。

《創(chuàng)業(yè)之道》書中開頭不久，萊斯就比較了“老派公司”和“現(xiàn)代公司”的特征。二者的差異可能會讓在老派公司工作的人受打擊，迫切希望公司轉型。據(jù)萊斯分析，老派公司最重視季度業(yè)績，有通曉各種職能的專家，跟蹤的指標都讓管理者看起來很能干。中層管理者喜歡重復之前的工作，而且影響力很大。相比之下，現(xiàn)代公司更注重長遠，擅長組建跨部門團隊，迅速實驗，更關注業(yè)務運營的實際影響?？傊?，現(xiàn)代公司讓具有創(chuàng)新精神的人擔任改革先鋒。

萊斯的批評針對了當今商業(yè)世界大部分公司。一開始他完全抵制大企業(yè)。但他逐漸發(fā)現(xiàn)理念中存在矛盾。萊斯對創(chuàng)業(yè)有個標準定義，“在極端不確定情況下實施創(chuàng)新的人類組織?！彼谘葜v時反復強調(diào)概念，也指出定義“并未指明企業(yè)的規(guī)模，發(fā)展階段，存在時間，領域和行業(yè)”等等。“最核心的一點是不確定性，”他表示?！八灾灰隙x就是創(chuàng)業(yè)，”不論規(guī)模多大。后來，隨著越來越多《財富》500強公司請他介紹，也有人說他吹牛，他的思路越發(fā)清晰，也接受挑戰(zhàn)開始與大公司合作。

萊斯認為大公司發(fā)展的重點是，別總想著規(guī)模。大公司要成立小團隊實施創(chuàng)新，充分授權而且要持續(xù)保護，這也是他的追隨者稱道的“21世紀組織架構”核心。一旦成立，小團隊可以跳出常規(guī)采取各種實驗，采取與公司之前開發(fā)產(chǎn)品不同的方式。

測試精益創(chuàng)業(yè)理念最著名的大公司當屬寶潔。這家消費品巨頭向來有創(chuàng)新的傳統(tǒng)，旗下有20個品牌，年銷售額超過10億美元。但近年來增長停滯。2016年寶潔聘請萊斯擔任顧問，給領導層將精益創(chuàng)業(yè)。寶潔首席研發(fā)和創(chuàng)新官凱西·費什稱，萊斯鼓勵寶潔認真考慮加快研發(fā)并測試簡化產(chǎn)品。“我們公司很大，有很多人負責創(chuàng)新，”她表示?！艾F(xiàn)在成立了小型的專門團隊，最小的只有三個人?！保▓F隊簡化后有什么意想不到的好處？開會少多了。）

時任通用電氣總裁的杰弗里·伊梅爾特曾經(jīng)問他，如果讓他掌管通用電氣會怎樣。“我說，‘我會死的。10分鐘都撐不了。這份工作會壓垮我?！?

寶潔的精益創(chuàng)業(yè)實驗要等多年才能顯現(xiàn)效果，但在改變大企業(yè)思維方面已經(jīng)初見成效。舉例來說，去年秋天寶潔推出了簡化版新款護舒寶和丹碧絲衛(wèi)生巾，并開始在美國市場測試。寶潔采取了“事務性簡化實驗”，在200家塔吉特商店推出了早期版本。寶潔希望千禧一代消費者會喜歡新款。對比之前要等三年才能推出新款，這種簡化迅速的測試證實消費者愿意支付額外費用嘗鮮。

雖然此前寶潔也會做態(tài)度研究和大規(guī)模市場調(diào)研，“現(xiàn)在我們很早就能做出‘充滿信心’的假設，”費什表示。三款衛(wèi)生巾中有一款表現(xiàn)不好。如果在過去，整個測試會受阻。但現(xiàn)在寶潔只要繼續(xù)推另外兩款即可。

萊斯最出名的案例要數(shù)通用電氣，多達60000名員工接受了有關精益創(chuàng)業(yè)的培訓。他們在數(shù)百個項目里事件，從加速設計飛機引擎到“數(shù)字化”風力電場到幫助客戶決定如何更好地配置通用電氣渦輪。萊斯的方法在通用電氣還有個新名字，叫“快速法”，管理者表示這套思路已經(jīng)融入整個公司?！艾F(xiàn)在公司上下通行‘快速法’語言，”通用電氣文化轉型負責人詹尼斯·森佩爾表示?！熬唧w來說包括重視客戶價值，行動前先理解問題，還有認真考慮資本配置等等?！?

即便一些老將陸續(xù)離開通用電氣，包括伊梅爾特和曾負責創(chuàng)新事務的副總裁貝斯·康斯托克，但萊斯的方法，也即“快速法”似乎已在通用電氣扎根，由此可見其影響力。當然了，通用電氣的問題可能不只是缺乏創(chuàng)新精神。新上任的首席執(zhí)行官約翰·弗蘭納里就對增長乏力很不滿意，提出要拆分公司。萊斯表示對通用電氣的前景“謹慎樂觀”，還相信快速法會發(fā)揮重要作用。

萊斯在《創(chuàng)業(yè)之道》結尾處理了一個長期困擾他的問題。他能幫助創(chuàng)業(yè)公司增長，卻無法改變上市公司面臨的問題，因為市場過于癡迷短期財務數(shù)據(jù)，這種氛圍不鼓勵冒險因而扼殺創(chuàng)新。他建議成立長期股票交易所，公司只用專注長期發(fā)展，長期持有的投資者會獲得豐厚回報。其商業(yè)模式將涉及與傳統(tǒng)股票交易所競爭公司首發(fā)上市。

但沒人按照萊斯的建議行動，幾年后他成立了一家名叫長期股票交易所（LTSE）的公司，開始不斷向證券交易委員會遞交文件，申請掛牌和交易股票的資質(zhì)。2016年公司獲得多家風投1900萬美元投資，包括安德森·霍洛維茨等科技圈大佬。按照萊斯設想，新交易所將采取全新的監(jiān)管制度，例如禁止出具季報。投資者層面，LTSE建議采取終身投票制，長期持有股票的投資者投票權會增加。交易員仍然可以買進賣出股票，但對管理層幾乎不構成影響。

雖然向來理性，但萊斯提到LTSE需求時還是忍不住充滿義憤。他指出，現(xiàn)在越來越少公司愿意上市，因為保持私有化狀態(tài)遠遠好過應付一幫無情的激進投資者和其他只看短期的假投資者?！叭绻@種趨勢持續(xù)下去會怎樣，我真是不明白，”他表示。“感覺最后市場上只能留下，比方說七家超級集團，其他公司都保持私有。這種政策結果太可怕?！?

然而，理論想轉化為實際挑戰(zhàn)多多，雖然公司里15名員工全力奮戰(zhàn)，萊斯擔任首席執(zhí)行官，但LTSE仍然停留在紙面上。去年秋天，萊斯表示年底會向監(jiān)管部門提交文件，但到12月公司發(fā)展“轉向”。其與一家新股票交易所IEX達成合作，IEX創(chuàng)始人曾出現(xiàn)在邁克爾·劉易斯暢銷書《閃擊者：華爾街的反抗》中。合作后在LTSE掛牌的股票可以在IEX交易，IEX已經(jīng)獲得證券交易委員會許可。

另外，市場上還存在普遍擔心，重視長期投資者會降低掛牌公司的價值。LTSE并不同意這一觀點：“我們打造的系統(tǒng)里，企業(yè)可以提升到更高標準，”曾在奧巴馬政府財政部和紐交所任職的米歇爾·格林尼表示，目前她擔任LTSE首席政策官?！笆袌龉膭罟芾韺訛殚L遠打算時，企業(yè)才能創(chuàng)造更多價值?！?

目前來看，LTSE面臨的還是先有蛋還是先有雞的困境。沒有證券交易委員會的批準，就沒法吸引公司掛牌；但即便獲得許可，在此掛牌的公司還要拿發(fā)展過程中最重要的融資機會去測試一個尚未證明的概念。“有公司真正掛牌之前，還有很多未知數(shù)，”Twitter前首席執(zhí)行官也是LTSE投資人迪克·科斯特羅表示。專門負責幫創(chuàng)業(yè)公司上市的LTSE顧問利斯·布耶爾補充說：“埃里克做的是好事，但前路十分艱辛。高度監(jiān)管的市場里，變革是十分緩慢的。”

然而萊斯還是全力投入LTSE發(fā)展，現(xiàn)在是他的全職工作。他基本上不接新的咨詢業(yè)務，他也表示“咨詢行業(yè)的競爭也越發(fā)激烈?，F(xiàn)在做創(chuàng)業(yè)咨詢的人已經(jīng)大把?！?

說有大把人加入創(chuàng)業(yè)咨詢可能都保守了。由于企業(yè)對精益創(chuàng)業(yè)需求太旺盛，Bionic、Moves the Needle和Leanstack之類紛紛投身其中，精益創(chuàng)業(yè)論壇上還有更多類似公司熱情洋溢，準備爭奪萊斯做不了的領域。萊斯仍然在接業(yè)務。前通用電氣高管史蒂芬·里郭利負責溢價創(chuàng)新咨詢公司，向荷蘭銀行ING和香港的怡和洋行等機構提供萊斯式咨詢服務。里郭利和萊斯還做起副業(yè)，成立了名叫企業(yè)創(chuàng)新社區(qū)的會員組織，主要聚集大公司負責創(chuàng)新的高管，分享優(yōu)秀案例。創(chuàng)始會員包括通用電氣、大都會人壽、寶潔、先鋒集團、ING和惠普等。

萊斯有兩個孩子，他表示現(xiàn)在沒什么時間享受愛好。但他經(jīng)常彈鋼琴和吉他，最近還將極客一面與音樂結合起來?！拔易詫W了聲音剪輯和音頻工程，”他表示?！拔蚁矚g樂器領域可編程和模式化趨勢。專家們對樂器的物理特性進行數(shù)學模擬，然后產(chǎn)生的對應的聲波?！比绻R斯繼續(xù)精進研究，沒準有一天能在Warfield劇場開演奏會呢。（財富中文網(wǎng)）

本文另一版本刊登于2018年3月出版的《財富》雜志，標題為《意料之外的創(chuàng)業(yè)大師》。

譯者：Pessy

審校：夏林

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The Warfield Theatre in San Francisco’s gritty Mid-Market neighborhood is a legendary temple of rock, host over the years to the likes of Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, and Guns N’ Roses. It’s jarring, then, to walk through its beer-soaked halls, plop down onto a threadbare seat in the cavernous auditorium, and listen to smartly dressed business types evangelizing about entrepreneurialism.

The speakers are an eclectic group, yet they’re singing from the same buzzword-laden hymnal. Jyoti Shukla, vice president of user experience at retailer Nordstrom, enthuses about having a “customer-first mindset” and “an ability to ride with change and embrace discomfort.” Alex Osterwalder of the consultancy Strategyzer, which coaches clients through “innovation sprints,” urges attendees to have a “21st-century org chart.” Even outposts of the federal government have mastered the lingo. Ann Mei Chang, a former chief innovation officer at the U.S. Agency for International Development, warns nonprofits not to measure success with “vanity metrics” and decries the perils of “ramping too quickly.”

The occasion for these sermons is the annual Lean Startup Conference, in November, and the speakers share a common trait: They are disciples of Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, the seminal tract that spawned a self-proclaimed movement of which this is a convocation of the faithful. The mantras they repeat—most prominently “minimum viable product,” or MVP, a company’s quickest, cheapest way to test the market, and “pivot,” which is what businesses do when failure demands a new approach—all come from Ries’s 2011 book, which has sold more than a million copies in English and has been published in 30 languages.

The mark Ries has made on the startup landscape cannot be overstated. Entrepreneurs everywhere have adopted his vocabulary as well as his methods, including testing their hypotheses with customers and gauging the success of innovation with relevant accounting measurements beyond revenues and market share. “He unequivocally has been as impactful on the mindset of startups as anyone else in the last decade,” says Rob Siegel, who teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University’s business school.

The 39-year-old guru himself is here too, holding court in a dimly lit greenroom in the bowels of the theater. He huddles with a grateful team from the National Security Agency, which has implemented his techniques—on a project involving nuclear codes, no less. He bro-hugs Justin Rosenstein, who holds the dubious distinction (by his own admission) of having invented the “l(fā)ike” button on Facebook and now runs Asana, a collaboration software startup. The conference is more labor of love than profit-making effort for Ries, who sports a mustache-less scraggly beard and, in a pinch, could play stunt double for actor Seth Rogen. But the event also is an important linchpin in his one-man consulting, publishing, and speaking empire.

The companies that Ries has advised now number in the hundreds. And while startups are his passion, in the years since The Lean Startup appeared he came to realize the term had been too narrowly understood. Properly nurtured, he now says, innovation lurks in the bellies of even the stodgiest corporations. Ries’s second book, The Startup Way, published in October, focuses squarely on big companies, notably General Electric, one of the first to hire Ries as a coach and to widely deploy his teachings.

Ries didn’t seek out big companies, which all had been innovative at some point but all too often have become bureaucratic, process-oriented, and risk-averse. But once they found him, he realized he could help. “I had several years where I was living a double life,” he says. “On the one hand I was talking with these guys”—successful entrepreneurs—“who were trying to figure out how to retain that startup DNA as they scaled. At the same time a separate group of people were trying to recapture that DNA they had lost.”

By following his own advice of relentlessly testing his hypotheses and asking questions, Ries hit on a formula for corporate innovation that’s relevant across the gamut of the business world. His ideas can seem straightforward or even obvious on the page, but like other adept teachers, he’s able to make them compelling and urgent in lectures, conversations, and coaching sessions. Today, he’s even got a fledgling startup of his own, an audacious gambit to create a new stock exchange focused on squelching the scourge of short-termism on Wall Street—to the benefit of founders of his beloved startups. Ries, it turns out, is the rare teacher who practices what he preaches, potentially making his lessons all the more valuable for leaders of all stripes.

A few days after the Lean Startup Conference wraps, Ries has holed up in an apartment he keeps as a writing retreat just down the street from his home in a leafy San Francisco neighborhood. The walls and the couches are all white. It’s a simple hideaway, a good place for reflection. Ries needs the tranquil setting. By late fall, he already has traveled to New York, Philadelphia, Boston, New York again, and Los Angeles to promote the new book; he has plans for a workshop with Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati the following week and a trip to London after that.

He never expected to be in such demand. After The Lean Startup came out, Ries was inundated with invitations to lecture, consult, and coach, a career he hadn’t previously contemplated. “It just happened,” he says, adding that it took a while to get used to people paying him to tell them what he thought. Indeed, Ries volunteers a startling admission for Silicon Valley’s preeminent business guru. “This is probably not good for the profile,” he says, the author-as-subject anticipating the impact of his words, “but I don’t really like business that much, at least not as much as most of the people I talk to. I actually kind of feel bad about it.” He says Jeffrey Immelt, the erstwhile chief executive of GE, once asked what Ries would do if he ran the conglomerate. “I was like, ‘I would die. I wouldn’t last 10 minutes. It would destroy me.’?”

What came naturally to Ries was writing code and starting companies. He grew up in San Diego, where both of his parents are physicians and professors. (He has two younger sisters, one a psychiatrist and the other a federal prosecutor; Ries’s wife, Tara Mohr, a Stanford MBA, is a life coach and author. “I’m the black sheep of the family,” he quips, “the only one at Thanksgiving without an advanced degree.”) He studied philosophy and then computer science at Yale, dropped out to pursue a startup that flopped, then finished school. He quickly made his way to Silicon Valley to work on yet another failed startup.

At his next company, IMVU, Ries began developing the theories that would lead to the lean startup methodology. IMVU, which after several “pivots” now makes virtual avatars for social networks, became known for rapid product iteration, a process software people call “agile” development. Ries and his cofounder, Will Harvey, had a guru of their own, University of California at Berkeley professor Steve Blank, who would go on to write his own innovation bestseller, The Four Steps to the Epiphany. “Every Thursday we would get on BART”—the Bay Area’s mass transit line—“and go to Berkeley to audit his class,” recalls Harvey.

The irony of Ries’s subsequent exalted status among entrepreneurs is that none of his startups amounted to much. IMVU, still privately held with $60 million in profitable revenue today, is a plodder by Silicon Valley standards. Ries left in 2008, hung out for a time at venture firm Kleiner Perkins, and mostly devoted himself to an increasingly popular blog about his observations on starting and scaling companies. The blog got him going on the book, which led to his speaking and consulting career. Then big companies started calling.

Early in The Startup Way, Ries compares the traits of “an old-fashioned company” and a “modern company.” The contrasts are devastating for anyone who works at the former and wishes their employer were more like the latter. An old-fashioned company, in Ries’s estimation, focuses on quarterly results, has experts in functionalized silos, and tracks metrics that make managers look good. Middle managers, intent on doing things how they’ve always been done, hold tremendous sway. A modern company, in contrast, is long-term-oriented, utilizes cross-functional teams, deploys rapid experiments, and measures the meaningful impact of business operations. Above all, modern companies empower entrepreneurial thinkers as change agents.

Ries’s criticisms amount to an indictment of most of the corporate world. Initially, he flat-out resisted becoming a sage for big businesses. But he gradually came to see a contradiction in his own philosophy. Ries has a standard definition of a startup, “a human institution designed to bring something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.” His rinse-and-repeat presentation on the subject notes that his definition “doesn’t say anything about size of company, stage, its age, sector, industry,” and so on. “It’s fundamentally about uncertainty,” he says. “And therefore anyone who meets this definition is an entrepreneur,” regardless of scale. Over time, as more denizens of the Fortune 500 came to hear him speak—and called his bluff—his intellectual curiosity got the better of him, and he accepted the challenge of working with megacorporations.

Ries reckoned that the trick for big companies was to stop thinking about their size. They needed to form small groups devoted to the practice of innovation, and empower and protect them on a continual basis—as the core of the “21st-century org chart” his followers admire. Once formed, these smaller units could run experiments that were outside the norm of how their companies might typically launch products.

One of the most storied companies to give lean-startup thinking a whirl is Procter & Gamble. The consumer products Goliath has an impressive history of innovation—it has 20 brands with more than $1 billion in annual sales—but in recent years, growth had stalled. The company hired Ries in 2016 to speak to its top commercial leaders. He inspired them to get serious about speedier and leaner product testing, says Kathy Fish, P&G’s chief research, development, and innovation officer. “Because we’re a big company we had lots of people involved with innovation,” she says. “Now we have small, dedicated groups, as small as three people.” (One unexpected bonus of lean teams? Fewer meetings.)

[/bs-quote]Ries was asked what he would do if he were CEO of GE. “I was like, ‘I would die. I wouldn’t last 10 minutes. It would destroy me.’”[/bs-quote]

While P&G’s lean-startup experiments will take years to play out, it already has seen a measurable change in its corporate mindset. This past fall, for example, it began market-testing new versions of its Always and Tampax feminine pads in the U.S. that featured simpler ingredients. It deployed a “transactional learning experiment” that introduced early versions in 200 Target stores. P&G hoped the products would be popular with millennials, and the limited, speedy test—they got to market in a year compared with the typical three—confirmed that customers would pay a premium.

Whereas before P&G would have conducted attitudinal research and large market tests, “now we get clear early on ‘leap-of-faith’ assumptions,” says Fish. One of the three sizes for the pad initially tested poorly with consumers. Traditionally, that would have stalled the entire test; instead, P&G moved forward with two sizes.

At Ries’s most prominent test case, General Electric, upwards of 60,000 employees have been trained in lean-startup methods. They have worked on hundreds of projects, from speedily designed aircraft engines to “digital” wind farms that help customers determine how best to deploy GE turbines. The Ries way even has its own name at GE, FastWorks, which executives describe as a corporate way of life. “The language of the company has become the FastWorks language,” says Janice Semper, culture transformation leader at GE. “That includes customer value, understanding problems before we start, and being smart about our thinking before we decide on capital allocation.”

It speaks to the impact of Ries’s approach that FastWorks appears to have stuck at GE despite the departure of many of its champions, including Immelt and Beth Comstock, the vice chair who previously led GE’s innovation efforts. Of course, GE’s problems may be bigger than being more innovative. New CEO John Flannery is so frustrated with anemic growth that he has floated the idea of breaking up the company. Ries says he’s “cautiously optimistic” about GE, and confident the FastWorks efforts will bear meaningful fruit.

At the very end of The Lean Startup, Ries addressed a policy matter that was bugging him. He could help startups grow, but he couldn’t do much about the environment they’d face as public companies in a marketplace obsessed with short-term financial goals—a climate that stifles innovation by discouraging risk-taking. He proposed a long-term stock exchange, where companies would agree to focus on the long haul and investors would be rewarded for holding on to their shares longer. Its business model would involve competing for IPO listings against traditional stock exchanges.

No one acted on Ries’s proposal, so a few years later, he founded a company, called it the Long-Term Stock Exchange, and began the arduous process of getting permission from the Securities and Exchange Commission to list and trade stocks. In 2016 it raised $19 million from a bevy of VC firms, including Andreessen Horowitz, and tech-industry luminaries. It instituted novel governance rules, like forbidding quarterly earnings guidance. On the investor side, LTSE proposed so-called tenured voting, which gives shareholders who keep their stakes more voting power. Traders would be free to dart in and out of stocks, but they’d have little to no influence over management.

A rational guy, Ries can approach righteous indignation when talking about the need for LTSE. Fewer companies are going public, he notes, because it’s easier to stay private than face the wrath of ruthless activists and other short-term actors. “I don’t really understand what people’s plan is if this trend continues,” he says. “We’re going to wind up with, like, seven public companies that are mega-conglomerates, and everything else is private. That’s a terrible policy outcome.”

Translating theory into reality has proved challenging, however, and despite the efforts of a 15-person staff, with Ries as CEO, LTSE remains mostly an idea. Last fall, Ries said LTSE would file with securities regulators by the end of the year, but in December the startup pivoted. It reached an agreement with IEX, a new stock exchange whose founders starred in Michael Lewis’s bestseller Flash Boys, whereby LTSE-listed stocks will trade on IEX, which already earned SEC approval.

There’s also the niggling and widespread fear that favoring long-term investors will decrease values of the listed companies. It’s an assertion LTSE disputes: “We’re creating a system that allows companies to be held to a higher standard,” says Michelle Greene, an Obama administration Treasury and NYSE veteran who is LTSE’s chief policy officer. “When you really enable management to manage for the long term, that will enable them to create more value.”

For now, LTSE faces classic chicken-and-egg dilemmas. It can’t list any company without SEC approval; but once it can, any company that chooses it for its IPO will risk the most important fundraising event in its history on an unproven concept. “Before you take a company public there’s a lot you don’t know,” says Dick Costolo, the former CEO of Twitter and an LTSE investor. Adds LTSE adviser Lise Buyer, who runs a firm that helps startups go public: “Eric is trying to do good things, but it will be a long hard climb. Change comes very slowly to regulated markets.”

Still, Ries is so committed to the Long-Term Stock Exchange that it’s now his full-time job. He generally isn’t taking on new consulting clients. But he notes that “a lot of other entities have taken up the slack. There’s now a cottage industry of people who do startup consulting.”

Cottage industry may be an understatement. Corporate hunger for lean-startup help is so robust that groups with names like Bionic, Moves the Needle, and Leanstack—and oodles more that roamed the halls at the Lean Startup Conference—are ready to step in where Ries can’t. And Ries still has his hand in the game. Stephen Liguori, an ex–GE executive, now runs an innovation consulting firm that plays Ries-ian roles for the likes of Dutch bank ING and Hong Kong’s Jardine Matheson. Liguori and Ries also have a new side business, a membership organization called the Corporate Entrepreneurship Community, that brings together innovation executives from large companies to compare best practices. Charter members include GE, MetLife, P&G, Vanguard, ING, and HP .

Ries, who has two small children, says there isn’t much time left for hobbies. But he does play piano and guitar, and he has a new musical passion that indulges his geeky side. “I taught myself sound editing and audio engineering,” he says. “I like the programmable and modeled instrument trend. They build a mathematical simulation of the physics of what the instrument would be, and then generate the sound waves from that.” If he gets good enough, Ries might even play the Warfield one day.

A version of this article appears in the March 2018 issue of Fortune with the headline “The Accidental Guru.” We’ve included affiliate links in this article.