Synopses & Reviews
From three design partners at Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for solving tough problems using design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.
The startups that Google Ventures invest in face big questions every day: Where’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your ideas look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution to a problem? Business owners and investors want their companies and the people who lead them to be equipped to answer these questions—and quickly. And now there’s a sure-fire way to solve their problems and test solutions: the sprint.
While working at Google, designer Jake Knapp created a unique problem-solving method that he coined a “design sprint”—a five-day process to help companies answer crucial questions. His ‘sprints’ were used on everything from Google Search to Chrome to Google X. When he moved to Google Ventures, he joined Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky, both designers and partners there who worked on products like YouTube and Gmail. Together Knapp, Zeratsky, and Kowitz have run over 100 sprints with their portfolio companies. They’ve seen firsthand how sprints can overcome challenges in all kinds of companies: healthcare, fitness, finance, retailers, and more.
A practical guide to answering business questions, Sprint is a book for groups of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to non-profits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.
Synopsis
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WALL STREET JOURNAL BESTSELLER
"Sprint offers a transformative formula for testing ideas that works whether you're at a startup or a large organization. Within five days, you'll move from idea to prototype to decision, saving you and your team countless hours and countless dollars. A must read for entrepreneurs of all stripes." --Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup
From three partners at Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for solving tough problems, proven at more than a hundred companies.
Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What's the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution?
Now there's a surefire way to answer these important questions: the sprint. Designer Jake Knapp created the five-day process at Google, where sprints were used on everything from Google Search to Google X. He joined Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky at Google Ventures, and together they have completed more than a hundred sprints with companies in mobile, e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and more.
A practical guide to answering critical business questions, Sprint is a book for teams of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to nonprofits. It's for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.
Synopsis
From inside Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for solving tough problems, proven at thousands of companies in mobile, e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and more. Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What's the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution?
Now there's a surefire way to answer these important questions: the Design Sprint, created at Google by Jake Knapp. This method is like fast-forwarding into the future, so you can see how customers react before you invest all the time and expense of creating your new product, service, or campaign.
In a Design Sprint, you take a small team, clear your schedules for a week, and rapidly progress from problem, to prototype, to tested solution using the step-by-step five-day process in this book.
A practical guide to answering critical business questions, Sprint is a book for teams of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to nonprofits. It can replace the old office defaults with a smarter, more respectful, and more effective way of solving problems that brings out the best contributions of everyone on the team--and helps you spend your time on work that really matters.
About the Author
Jake Knapp created Google Ventures’ sprint process, and has run over 100 sprints with startups like Medium, Nest, 23andMe, and Flatiron Health. Previously, Jake was a designer at Google, leading sprints for everything from Gmail to Google X to Chrome. He grew up on a rural island in Washington State, began his design career at Oakley, and led product design on Microsoft Encarta.John Zeratsky is a designer and writer who has worked on consumer, enterprise, and medical software products. He worked on the YouTube redesign in 2011 and helped create FeedBurner, which Google acquired in 2007. At Google Ventures, John has worked with more than 100 companies, including Slack, Blue Bottle Coffee, RetailMeNot, and Foundation Medicine. He studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin and lives in San Francisco with his wife.Braden Kowitz founded Google Ventures’ design team in 2009 and pioneered the role of “design partner” at a venture capital firm. He has worked with close to 200 startups, providing hands-on design support from interaction design, to hiring, to team culture. Before joining Google Ventures, Braden led design for several Google products, including Gmail, Google Apps for Business, Google Spreadsheets, and Google Trends. Braden studied Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Human-Computer Interaction at Carnegie Mellon.