Bad Blood | Book Series

Overview:

Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of Theranos, the multibillion-dollar biotech startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end, despite pressure from its charismatic CEO and threats by her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionise the medical industry with a machine that would make blood testing significantly faster and easier. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.7 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. In Bad Blood, John Carreyrou tells the riveting story of the biggest corporate fraud since Enron, a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley.

Author:   

John Carreyrou

Published In:

28 Aug 2018

 

SMED | Glossary

Definition:

Existing systems and tools often need to be reinvented to support working in smaller batches. Shigeo Shingo created concept of SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die) in order to enable a smaller batch size of work in early Toyota factories.

SMED (Single-Minute Exchange of Die) is a system for dramatically reducing the time it takes to complete equipment changeovers. The essence of the SMED system is to convert as many changeover steps as possible to “external” (performed while the equipment is running), and to simplify and streamline the remaining steps. The name Single-Minute Exchange of Dies comes from the goal of reducing changeover times to the “single” digits

 

Further Reading:

Book: The Lean Startup – by Eric Ries