I have noticed that I have been reading more about books than the books themselves. In many ways, this trend was bound to happen. There are more books out there than any one human can read in a lifetime. And, plenty of new books are released every day. If one wishes to keep abreast of the latest in many fields, the best one can do is read good book reviews. And add to that all the other stuff that gets created every day: movies, songs, TV shows, etc. There just isn’t enough time in a lifetime to cover everything. A recent blog on NPR covered this issue. One of the insights in that article was that it is not really a sad thing that we cannot read everything. Here’s a quote:

It’s sad, but it’s also … great, really. Imagine if you’d seen everything good, or if you knew about everything good. Imagine if you really got to all the recordings and books and movies you’re “supposed to see.” Imagine you got through everybody’s list, until everything you hadn’t read didn’t really need reading. That would imply that all the cultural value the world has managed to produce since a glob of primordial ooze first picked up a violin is so tiny and insignificant that a single human being can gobble all of it in one lifetime. That would make us failures, I think.

Last week I read Steven Blank’s “The Four Steps to the Epiphany” and I had another epiphany quite different from that covered by the book. I realized how much is lost in simply reading about a book instead of actually reading the book. Blank’s book has received plenty of press and most people in the Tech industry are familiar with it. Reading the book, I could not help wonder how much the book would have helped me if only I had bothered to read it. Reading about a book might give you the false impression that you understood everything about it. My take away: Do not ignore the best books in your field. This means picking what you want to focus on and making sure you cover the best works. There is a reason why some books get universal acclaim. Read them first hand and find out why.

Coming back to Blank’s book, Amazon and elsewhere already have plenty of details about the book. It does not make much sense to recap them here. From my Engineering/Product Management perspective, here are a few must remember points:

• Start your Customer Development process in parallel with your Product Development process.
• Reduce risk and always verify and validate all your hypothesis and assumptions regarding your product, its potential customers, the operating plan, and the marketing plan.
• As important as it is to develop a good product, it is even more important to develop a good product that customers will pay for. It is essential to keep in mind the market that the company is targeting.

And yes, reading this blog post does not mean you that you learnt everything about the “The Four Steps to the Epiphany”.