The folks at 37signals.com have released a book that encompasses their business philosophy that is very innovative and agile. The book is called Getting Real and is available at http://gettingreal.37signals.com It is a fairly quick read and is easy-to-read even for the non-technical readers.

This current month's issue of BusinessWeek also has a feature on 37signals and their approach to go from concept to released product in 3 and a half-months or less. I am a big advocate of their philosophy because it can be a great mantra for Indian IT start-ups. The book professes a low-cost and lean approach to starting up that enables you to move quickly and engage customers early. Other key points in the book include the technique of being customer-centric in your product design and starting at the market-end, not at the engineering-end. They also list pitfalls that web-application-developing entrepreneurs commonly run into, and suggest how those can be avoided.