Nothing is ever really lost, or can be lost, 
No birth, identity, form—no object of the world. 
Nor life, nor force, nor any visible thing; 
Appearance must not foil, nor shifted sphere confuse thy brain. 
Ample are time and space—ample the fields of Nature. 
The body, sluggish, aged, cold—the embers left from earlier fires, 
The light in the eye grown dim, shall duly flame again; 
The sun now low in the west rises for mornings and for noons continual; 
To frozen clods ever the spring’s invisible law returns, 
With grass and flowers and summer fruits and corn. 

By Walt Whitman

(Source: daypoems.net)

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream? 

Edgar Allan Poe

(Source: poemhunter.com)

Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable.  The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned professionals in a Fortune 500 boardroom. What they have in common is a mission to penetrate that fog of uncertainty to discover a successful path to a sustainable business.

The Lean Startup approach fosters companies that are both more capital efficient and that leverage human creativity more effectively.  Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want. It enables a company to shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute.

Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs - in companies of all sizes - a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in a age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

Hardcover: 336 Pages

Published: 13^th September 2011

ISBN: 0307887898

Our Rating: 4 out of 5

(Source: goodreads.com)