Spinning into Control

This book encourages startup founders to maintain control of their destiny by obsessively perfecting their startup's story and key relationships as much as its initial product or service. It highlights the importance of improvisation in the incubation of startups. Startup founders hoping to master their destinies develop the skills of venture craftsmen, learning to behave more like explorers and artisans than managers and engineers. The improvisational arts of tinkering, wandering, and conversing overcome the limitations of scientifically based "lean" methodologies for creating startups. These skills provide wobbly, nascent ventures with stability and conserve momentum during early-stage incubation. Like the gimbals of a gyroscope, they counter the entropy born of change, conflict and confusion that is continuously pushing young enterprises towards chaos. As their startups spin, venture craftsmen actually loosen the coupling between command and control. Startup sustainability relies on relentless improvisation, the heart of the art of entrepreneurship. Vignettes in each chapter of Spinning Into Control relate hardscrabble stories of entrepreneurs, craftsmen and venturers - some recently interviewed by the author, others historical - recounting the challenges they faced, their responses, the lessons they learned, and the eventually triumphant outcomes.