Future² Innovation

Steve Blank is considered by many to be the godfather of Silicon Valley and is credited with spearheading the customer development model which birthed the lean startup, popularised by his former pupil Eric Ries' book of the same name. He is one of the most prominent and widely respected thought leaders in the world on innovation and entrepreneurship. Over the last 35 years, Steve has been part of, or co-founded eight Silicon Valley startups. These have run the gamut from semiconductors, video games, personal computers, and supercomputers. (MIPS, Zilog, Rocket Science, SuperMac, Convergent Technologies, Ardent, ESL) Steve's last company was E.piphany, an enterprise software company. Steve currently teaches entrepreneurship at U.C. Berkeley-Haas Business School, Columbia University, NYU, Stanford University Engineering School and UCSF. In 2009 he was awarded the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award in the department of Management Science and Engineer