Eric Ries on Why Good Companies Go Bad (and How Yours Doesn't Have To)

“Reading it made me so hopeful and excited that I've been telling everyone I know about it. This is not just a book for MBAs or people who work in business. It's for anyone who has wondered, 'Is capitalism fixable?' . . . The book doesn't encourage a pivot away from profitmaking. Quite the contrary — it argues that if you want your business to do well, founders and executives should focus on doing good.” —Ari Shapiro, NPR Host & Author

Eric Ries changed how a generation of founders builds companies. Ideas like MVP, the pivot, build-measure-learn came from his 2011 bestseller The Lean Startup. But in the years since, Eric has been wrestling with a harder question. Why do good companies go bad, and what can you do to make sure yours doesn't?

His answer is in his new book Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad...and How Great Companies Stay Great. At its center is a concept he calls "financial gravity," the quiet, compounding pressure that pulls companies away from the missions they started with.

In Eric's conversation with moderator Bob Sutton (Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, Organizational Psychologist, and bestselling author), Eric will unpack how to architect mission into a company from day one, the structural mistakes founders make that compound at scale, and what Lean Startup looks like in the age of AI. This is for founders, operators, investors, and anyone thinking seriously about what it takes to build something that lasts.

Please note: Incorruptible will not be available onsite, but guests who purchase the book option will receive a copy shipped May 26, along with a signed bookplate from Eric. All attendees are welcome to bring their own copy of The Lean Startup for signing, or purchase one on-site if a bookseller is present.

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Eric Ries: Over the last two decades, Eric Ries’s ideas about continuous innovation, long-term thinking, governance, and market reform have reshaped company building and management practices. He is the creator of the Lean Startup method, and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup; The Leader’s Guide; and The Startup Way.

As a founder, he has put his own ideas into practice with The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE); Answer.AI, an AI R&D lab; the Lean Startup Co, which teaches and supports the implementation of Lean Startup; Virgil, a legal services startup; and IMVU, where the ideas that became the Lean Startup method were forged. On his podcast, The Eric Ries Show, he talks to guests including world-class technologists, thought leaders, and executives working to build profitable companies for the long-term benefit of society. Eric has served as an entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School and IDEO. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three children.

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Bob Sutton is a New York Times bestselling author of 8 books including The No Asshole Rule and The Friction Project, and Professor Emeritus in the Stanford School of Engineering.

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