Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries

When much is known, procedural planning approaches work perfectly well. When much is unknown, they do not.

Most successful entrepreneurs, especially those who start businesses with limited capital, operate in this experimental way when trying new ideas. They think of learning the way most people think of failure.

Experimental innovators must be persistent and willing to accept failure and setbacks as they work toward their goals.

These methods are decidedly not ways of just trying a lot of things to see what sticks, like throwing spaghetti against a wall. The most productive creative people and teams are rigorous, highly analytical, strategic, and pragmatic. They do not, though, use a formulaic model that can be followed.

most successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with brilliant ideas—they discover them.

ingenious ideas almost never spring into people’s minds fully formed; they emerge through a rigorous experimental discovery process.

entrepreneurs do not try to avoid errors or surprises. They seek to learn from them, just as chefs often arrive at new recipes through improvisation.

No one can take their eye off their core business or responsibilities, but anyone can spend a portion of their time and energies using little bets to discover, test, and improve new ideas.