Steve Blank

Spring 2017 Honorary Degree Recipient

Doctor of Laws (honoris causa)

Author and educator Steve Blank literally wrote the book on modern startups. He sparked the experimental, evidence-based Lean Startup movement with his 2003 book The Four Steps to the Epiphany, informed by his more than two decades as an early employee or founder of eight different high-tech startups. The book, which began as notes for an entrepreneurship course and went on to become a global bestseller, posited the revolutionary idea that startups are not just smaller versions of big companies — they need their own tools and processes to move from idea to execution to product.  

In 2011, Mr. Blank created the Lean LaunchPad, an entrepreneurship class that puts customer development and lean business model design principles together in a fast-paced, real-life environment. The model has been adopted at more than 75 universities around the world; has become the standard for the commercialization of science in the U.S.; is driving defense innovation in the U.S.; and is firmly embedded at Dalhousie in the form of the university’s Starting Lean course and Launch Dal entrepreneurial programming. A number of enterprises have sprung from this multidisciplinary initiative on campus — including biomedical, big data and innovative product design companies — and many of the program’s students have stayed in Nova Scotia and become part of the entrepreneurial ecosystem helping drive the province’s economy.  

A prolific writer and speaker who is widely recognized as a thought leader on startups and innovation, Mr. Blank teaches entrepreneurship at the University of California Berkeley, Columbia University, New York University and Stanford University. Named to the Thinkers50 list of top management thinkers and recognized by the Harvard Business Review as one of 12 Masters of innovation, Steve is also Senior Fellow for Entrepreneurship at Columbia University. This is his first honorary doctorate.