Eric Ries
Most large companies still treat innovation as a creative event rather than a managed discipline. The teams shipping new products lack the metrics, governance, and decision rules that the core business takes for granted, so good ideas stall and bad ones consume capital for too long. Growth then depends on individual heroics instead of a repeatable system.
Eric Ries is the creator of the Lean Startup methodology and founder of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, helping established companies turn innovation into a managed discipline rather than a creative gamble.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Eric Ries
- He authored the operating method most used by modern product teams. When a CFO asks how an innovation portfolio should be measured and governed, the answer most large companies reach for is his.
- He has tested the method inside GE, IBM, Intuit, and the US federal government, not just early-stage startups, so the case studies he draws on are at enterprise scale.
- He founded the Long-Term Stock Exchange, a SEC-approved national securities exchange. That gives him a working perspective on how ownership structure and reporting cadence shape executive behaviour, well beyond a consultant’s view.
- His new book Incorruptible reframes corporate governance as a strategic act, addressing why successful companies drift from the principles that built them. Useful for boards under pressure on mission, accountability, and long-term value.
Biography highlights
- Author of The Lean Startup, The Startup Way, and Incorruptible (Authors Equity, distributed by Simon & Schuster, 2026).
- Founder and Executive Chairman of the Long-Term Stock Exchange, approved by the SEC in 2019.
- Architect of GE’s FastWorks program under CEO Jeff Immelt, applied across thousands of GE executives.
- Former Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Harvard Business School and IDEO Fellow; advisor to Pivotal.
- Ranked #12 on the Thinkers50 list (2019); The Lean Startup on the Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist (2023).
Biography
Most large companies are excellent at running the business they already have and unreliable at building the next one. The systems that govern the core business, budgets, milestones, quarterly review, were not designed for ventures whose value is mostly unknown at the point of funding. Eric Ries spent two decades turning that mismatch into a working method.
The Lean Startup, published in 2011, codified validated learning, the minimum viable product, and innovation accounting as a portable management discipline. The book has been translated into more than thirty languages and now sits on the Thinkers50 Management Classics Booklist. Its follow-up, The Startup Way, captured what happens when those ideas are pushed into established companies. The case studies are drawn from inside GE, where Ries worked with CEO Jeff Immelt on the FastWorks program, alongside engagements with IBM, Intuit, and the US federal government.
The governance question runs through all of his work. In 2015 he proposed the Long-Term Stock Exchange in The Lean Startup; the SEC approved LTSE as a national securities exchange in 2019, and Ries serves as Executive Chairman. His 2026 book Incorruptible, published by Authors Equity and distributed by Simon & Schuster, argues that good companies fail predictably because ownership, incentives, and accountability quietly reshape behaviour as they scale. The book was selected for the Thinkers50 Best New Management Booklist.
What separates Ries from other innovation speakers is range. He has authored the methodology, run the corporate transformations that test it, and built a regulated capital-markets venue to address the structural problem his books diagnose. For senior teams that want innovation handled as a portfolio discipline, not a culture programme, he is the source.
Key speaking topics
- Lean Startup methodology
- Innovation accounting and the management of internal ventures
- Entrepreneurial management inside established companies
- Corporate governance and long-term value
- AI applied to product validation and customer acquisition
- The Long-Term Stock Exchange and capital-markets reform
Ideal for
- CEOs and boards of public companies wrestling with quarterly pressure versus long-horizon investment.
- Chief innovation, strategy, and transformation officers responsible for portfolios of new ventures inside large organisations.
- Founders and senior leaders of scale-up companies preparing for institutional ownership.
- Corporate development and venture teams looking to apply validated-learning discipline to internal investment decisions.
Audience outcomes
- A working vocabulary for measuring new ventures separately from the core business, drawn directly from innovation accounting.
- A clear diagnosis of why most corporate innovation programmes fail at the governance layer rather than the creativity layer.
- A view of how ownership structure, board cadence, and reporting rules quietly shape executive behaviour over time.
- Specific case material from GE, IBM, Intuit, and US federal agencies that audiences can map onto their own structures.
Talks
A working session on how to run new ventures with the same rigour large companies apply to the core business.
Key takeaways:
- Why validated learning replaces traditional milestones as the unit of progress for new ventures.
- How innovation accounting changes the way internal projects are funded, reviewed, and shut down.
- What it takes to move from one-off pilots to a repeatable system for building new products.
A look at how AI is reshaping customer acquisition, personalisation, and the operating model of marketing.
Key takeaways:
- The metrics that matter when AI sits between the company and the customer.
- Where autonomous systems change the economics of acquisition channels.
- How to manage the complexity and risk of AI-led product decisions inside an established company.