Overview
"The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses" by Eric Ries (2011) is the most widely read articulation of the methodology that grew out of Steve Blank's Customer Development. Published by Crown Business, it became a New York Times bestseller and brought the lean startup approach to a mainstream business audience.
Relationship to Blank
Ries was Blank's student and developed the Lean Startup methodology by synthesizing Blank's Customer Development with agile engineering and lean manufacturing concepts. The book explicitly credits Blank as the originator of Customer Development and positions the Lean Startup as a practical implementation framework built on Blank's strategic foundation.
Significance
The book is the most important secondary source for understanding how Blank's ideas were transmitted to the broader world. While Blank's "Four Steps" was the foundational text, Ries' book was the popular one — more accessible, more widely read, and more directly responsible for the methodology's mainstream adoption.
Sources: "The Lean Startup" (Ries, 2011), Wikipedia