Brant Cooper on Lean Entrepreneurship Agile Innovation Leaders

Bio
Brant Cooper is The New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur and his new popular book Disruption Proof. He is the CEO and founder of Moves the Needle. He is a trusted adviser to startups and large enterprises around the world. With more than 25 years of expertise in changing industrial age mindset into digital age opportunity, he blends agile, human-centered design, and lean methodologies to ignite entrepreneurial action from the front lines to the C-suite. 

As a sought-after keynote speaker, startup mentor, and executive advisor, he travels the globe sharing his vision for reimagining 21st century organizations. Bringing agility, digital transformation, and a focus on creating value for customers, he helps leaders navigate the uncertainty brought on by increased complexity and endless disruption.  
Interview Highlights
01:30 Background
03:40 First startup
05:30 Learning from failure
06:50 The Lean Entrepreneur
07:30 Empowering employees
15:40 Learning through observation
19:00 Disruptions
22:00 Output vs Outcome
30:45 Working in teams
35:30 Aligning priorities
41:00 Disruption Proof
52:00 Take risks
 
Social Media
·         LinkedIn:  Brant Cooper
·         X/Twitter: @brantcooper
·         Email: brant@brantcooper.com
·         Website: www.brantcooper.com
·         Website: www.movestheneedle.com
·         YouTube: Brant Cooper
 
Books & Resources
·         Disruption Proof: Empower People, Create Value, Drive Change, Brant Cooper
·         The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Brant Cooper 
·          The Lean Entrepreneur: How Visionaries Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets, Brant Cooper, Patrick Vlaskovits, Eric Ries
·         The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Brant Cooper, Patrick Vlaskovits
·         Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts, Brené Brown, Brené Brown
·         Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, General Stanley McChrystal
 
Episode Transcript
Intro: Hello and welcome to the Agile Innovation Leaders podcast. I’m Ula Ojiaku. On this podcast I speak with world-class leaders and doers about themselves and a variety of topics spanning Agile, Lean Innovation, Business, Leadership and much more – with actionable takeaways for you the listener.
Ula Ojiaku
So I have with me Brant Cooper, who is the author of the books Lean Entrepreneur and his latest one, Disruption Proof: Empower People, Create Value, Drive Change. He also is the CEO and Founder of Moves the Needle. Brant, it is a pleasure and an honour to have you as my guest on the Agile Innovation Leaders Podcast.
Brant Cooper
Thank you so much for having me. I'm glad to be here.
Ula Ojiaku
Now Brant, as I start with all my guests, we want to know a bit more about you. So could you tell us about yourself growing up, your background, are there any experiences that have made a great impact on you that have led to you becoming the Brant we see today?
Brant Cooper
Yeah, so born and mostly raised in California, which seems to be somewhat unique these days, but also did travel around a bit. My dad was a Navy man. I don't know, I guess I was always a little bit different. I think a lot of us describe ourselves that way, but when I went away to school for college, most people were focusing on one major or maybe two majors because that was sort of the state of the world. It's kind of, this is a little while ago, but supposedly what you needed to do is go and get narrow expertise and then that was what was going to launch your career. But to me, that was boring. And so I wanted to take a little bit of everything. So chemistry an