Steve Blank Keynote Speaker

Steve Blank has led one heck of an interesting life. He’s had three careers: First, in the U.S. Air Force for four years during the Vietnam War. Next, as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur in 8 startups in two decades (with four IPOs). Currently as an academic teaching at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and NYU. Steve Blank electrifies corporate audiences with actionable tips for how to drive continuous innovation sharing the same battle-tested processes that Lean Startups use to achieve success.

Steve has changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught worldwide; how science is commercialized in the U.S., and how companies and the government innovate.

He is the author of “The Four Steps to the Epiphany,” credited with launching the Lean Startup movement and the bestselling Startup Owner’s Manual. His May 2013 Harvard Business Review cover story on the Lean Startup defined the Lean Startup movement.

Steve is widely recognized as a thought leader on startups and innovation. Named to the Thinkers50 list of top management thinkers and recognized by the Harvard Business Review as one of 12 Masters of Innovation, Steve is also Senior Fellow for Entrepreneurship at Columbia University.

His Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford, Berkeley and Columbia is taught in more than 75 universities around the globe. More than 300,000 people have signed up for a free version of the class, offered through Udacity.com.

The Innovation Corps class Steve created for the National Science Foundation is the standard for science commercialization in the U.S. And his Hacking for Defense class at Stanford is revolutionizing how the U.S. defense and intelligence community can deploy innovation with speed and urgency. Its sister class, Hacking for Diplomacy, is doing the same for foreign affairs challenges managed by the U.S. State Department.

A prolific writer, speaker and teacher, Steve blogs at www.steveblank.com and his articles regularly appear in Forbes, Fortune, The Atlantic, The Harvard Business Review and Huffington Post.

His talk “The Secret History of Silicon Valley” has become the standard history of why entrepreneurship blossomed in Silicon Valley while stillborn elsewhere. It has made him an unofficial expert and frequent speaker on the rise of entrepreneurial clusters as well as the role of the US government and military’s influence on entrepreneurship. In 2017, he was named to the Thinkers50 List of management speakers for the second time.

From 2006-2013 Steve served as a public official in California as Commissioner on the California Coastal Commission, the public body that regulates land use and public access on the California coast. He is on the board of the California League of Conservation Voters (CLCV); is a past board member of Audubon California, the Peninsula Open Space Land Trust (POST); and was a trustee of U.C. Santa Cruz.

Steve Blank is a frequent commencement speaker. National Public Radio listed his speech at Philadelphia University as one of the best commencement speeches, ever.

Steve’s dynamic presentations draw standing-room crowds at startup conferences, corporate meetings, university commencements and similar events, where he offers insight on such topics as:

• Innovation @50x – Moving Companies at Startup Speeds: How big companies can use Lean Startup techniques and processes to remain innovative
• Dealing With Disruption: How culture, process and people need to adapt and adopt in the world of continuous disruption.
• Entrepreneurship vs. Innovation: What is the Difference and Why Does it Matter? Steve explains why innovation inside an existing company or the government is different from building a startup, highlighting the different tools and mindsets needed to be a successful innovator or entrepreneur
• Harnessing Your R&D Department: How every federal research agency adopted Lean Startup methods to commercialize science – 1,500 teams of our best scientists and counting – and learn how your company can as well.
• Creating an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: Silicon Valley’s role as an entrepreneurial powerhouse has its roots in the Cold War, not a Palo Alto garage. Steve explains how the Silicon Valley came to be and how you can create an entrepreneurial ecosystem in your region.