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Jake Knapp Profile

  • His acclaimed "Sprint" method compresses a 6-month development process into 5 days.

  • As a design partner at Google ventures, he has run Sprints for over 100 start-ups including About.me, Nest, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Slack, answering critical business questions for each company and setting them on the course to success.

  • His best-selling book Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days has been deemed one of the most useful business books ever written.
  • Google Ventures design partner, Jake Knapp compressed a 6-month-long product development process into 5 days. To date “Sprint,” his accelerated method for taking abstract ideas to the test phase has helped more than 100 start-ups save time and money while taking bigger risks.

    Sprint’s conception began in 2003 when the birth of Jake’s first son made him rethink how he was using his time. Upon close examination he discovered that his work life was rather unproductive; he mostly churned from meeting to meeting. He honed his ability to make the most of small increments of time and moved from Microsoft to Google, where the spirit of experimentation got him brainstorming ways to make similar improvements to the way start-ups manage their time and resources during the development phase.

    The result was the 5-day Sprint process which he has successfully coordinated for multiple companies including Nest, Slack, 23andMe, and Flatiron Health. His best-selling book Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days details the process and has been deemed one of the “must-read” business books of the year.

    Jake has spoken about design process at Stanford, UC-Berkeley, and Columbia University

    • View Extended/Alternate Bio

      Jake Knapp is a design partner at Google Ventures. He created Google Ventures’ design sprint process, and has run over 80 sprints with startups like About.me, Nest, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Foundation Medicine. He’s spoken about design process at Stanford, UC-Berkeley, and Columbia University.

      Jake’s first book Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days has met rave reviews. The book delves into the unique five-day process for solving tough problems that he pioneered at Google and has since been proven at more than a hundred companies.

      Previously, Jake was Google’s design strategy vigilante. He led sprints for everything from Google X to Gmail to Google Chrome. Jake also started Google Hangouts.

      He is currently among the world’s tallest designers.

    Jake Knapp Speaking Videos

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    Jake Knapp's Speech Descriptions

    From his acclaimed 5-day Sprint process to his own methods of time management, Jake Knapp shows you how to get more out of the few hours we have each day. Using fun and practical examples from his own antics running Sprints, Jake gives you a step-by-step breakdown on doing what matters with speed and urgency, leaving you with more time, energy, and resources.

      Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just 5 days
      Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution?

      To answer these questions, Jake Knapp created the design sprint. It’s a “greatest hits” of business strategy, innovation, behavioral science, and more—proven at more than 100 startups and at companies like Google and Airbnb, and adapted into a step-by-step process that any team can use.

      Through stories and hard-won lessons, Jake will explain how to get the best ideas from every person on your team, make great decisions without groupthink, validate ideas before wasting time, and set the course for a successful business.

      Defragmentation: Simplifying Work and Life to Do What Matters
      At work, our time is often fragmented by email, meetings, and urgent but ultimately unimportant tasks. At home, our attention is divided between our smartphones, our friends and family, and our long term projects. We take this perpetual distraction for granted—but there’s no reason why we have to work and live this way. In this talk, Jake shows how simple actions can shift the way teams work together for radical efficiency improvements, and how this same approach can be applied to our personal lives.

    What People are Saying about Seeing Jake Speak

    Rating Entries

    “Jake’s presentations are always superbly received at Columbia University. He shows a genuine passion for teaching, mixing surprising insights with great storytelling.”
    – R.A. Farrokhnia, Professor at Columbia Schools of Engineering & Business

    “Jake wowed us with his talk. His combination of first-hand experience, deep knowledge and engaging humor is incredibly rare and incredibly entertaining.”
    – Nir Eyal, organizer of The Habit Summit

    “Jake inspired an audience of 300 medical executives to rethink their approach to care transformation. He made the principles of rapid design accessible with engaging case-studies from his work across multiple industries. It’s rare to leave a presentation with a new approach to your work that can be rapidly applied.”

    – Ralph Pascualy, Chief Executive of Swedish Medical Group, Seattle

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    Books by Jake Knapp:

    Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

    From three partners at Google Ventures, a unique five-day process for solving tough problems, proven at more than a hundred companies.

    Entrepreneurs and leaders face big questions every day: What’s the most important place to focus your effort, and how do you start? What will your idea look like in real life? How many meetings and discussions does it take before you can be sure you have the right solution?

    Now there’s a surefire way to answer these important questions: the sprint. Designer Jake Knapp created the five-day process at Google, where sprints were used on everything from Google Search to Google X. He joined Braden Kowitz and John Zeratsky at Google Ventures, and together they have completed more than a hundred sprints with companies in mobile, e-commerce, healthcare, finance, and more.

    A practical guide to answering critical business questions, Sprint is a book for teams of any size, from small startups to Fortune 100s, from teachers to nonprofits. It’s for anyone with a big opportunity, problem, or idea who needs to get answers today.

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