A hypothesis-driven approach to entrepreneurship—an approach that employs rigorous experiments and the logic of the scientific method—helps reduce this risk. To apply this approach, entrepreneurs translate their vision into hypotheses about their business model. They then test those hypotheses using a series of minimum viable products (MVPs). Each MVP represents, with respect to product functionality and the operational capabilities needed to deliver that functionality, the simplest possible offering required to disprove a hypothesis. (Note that in this reading we use product to refer both to physical offerings and to services.)

Landing-page tests are a common form of smoke testing. Before web startups develop any product features or assemble any operational capabilities, they often conduct landing-page tests that provide a brief description of a planned online service. They ask page visitors to leave an e-mail address if they wish to be contacted when the service launches. (In the world of direct selling between businesses, an equivalent test asks a potential client company to sign a legally nonbinding letter of intent to purchase an as-yet-unfinished new product.14)

For each business model element, an entrepreneur formulates a set of falsifiable hypotheses. As with the scientific method, a falsifiable hypothesis is one that can be rejected through a decisive experiment. Ries makes the following point about the importance of falsifiability: “If the plan is to see what happens, a team is guaranteed to succeed—at seeing what happens—but won’t necessarily gain validated learning. This is one of the most important lessons of the scientific method: If you cannot fail, you cannot learn.”5

Eden, Abrams, and Smith had all spent a good deal of time in the design and production stages of the computer project back and forth between Sturdivant headquarters in Allentown and the subcontractor’s headquarters in Concord, Massachusetts

A central component of the test facility was a digital computer. Although Sturdivant had prepared the performance specifications for the computer, it was the only major piece of equipment not designed and built by the company.

After finishing the book, Mr. Smith tried another gambit. His medication faltering, he got deep brain stimulation, with electrodes implanted in his brain and electrical pulses from a pacemaker trying to tame disruptive movements.

Early on, Mr. Smith worried that his novel, being published Tuesday by Simon & Schuster, would be unreadable too

In 1995, he received a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. But he kept it hidden, not only from the public, but from his publisher and editors.

They exist on the groggy side of a sleep divide, at an uncomfortable and unhealthful distance from the relatively well-rested majority of employees. Lost sleep impairs decision-making capability, undercuts productivity, and contributes to expensive adverse health effects, including elevated risks of cardiovascular and gastrointestinal conditions.

The proliferation of nonstandard work schedules and, for many, the outright abandonment of schedules have made traditional daytime-weekday patterns less common.

He began his business career in the tax department of New York State, but left it after two years to take a position as test planning engineer for Northern Electronics, Inc.

armed services

Personnel of the Sturdivant Electric company were ready to run final acceptance tests on a special purpose computer they had subcontracted to supply to the armed services. One of the stipulations in the contract was a demonstration by the supplier that the computer would function correctly and reliably under test conditions. The special operating system of the computer was prepared by Sturdivant Electric’s chief programmer, Al Abrams. Several days before the tests began,