Interestingly, Apple & Amazon are both on his admired company list. But, as I posted in the kanbandev mailing list a few months ago, both companies are notorious for being hierarchical & full of micromanagement [1]. It just so happens that they have had visionary leaders who are able to read the market very well (top-down innovation). So there is certainly some contradiction between what the self organisation theory tells us and what is happening in successful companies in practice.

[1] https://plus.google.com/112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX#112678702228711889851/posts/eVeouesvaVX

There is no way to say once in for all that something is done, it is just a matter of where you decide it is done – either at the code point, or deploy point, or validation point, or later on.

Furthermore, some validations come early, some come late. When you get hundred sign ups a week on a B2C product, you can easily split test a change and validate in days. If its a B2B product with a 6 month sales cycle then a split test is not possible.

I found 4 steps to be more deep because it approached the topic from a business point of view. Its a dense book to read (college textbook really), but lots of insights. By contrast I found Lean Startup too be too focused only on building the product — a web oriented, B2C, high volume product (like IMVU) is implied for most of the book. There is nothing in lean startup about marketing or sales techniques for example.