The Agile Base Practices can help you rapidly understand whether a creative effort will likely succeed or fail. Creative efforts that embrace the Base Practices are more likely to succeed with less effort and cost.
The author identified the Agile Base Practices by studying several agile frameworks in vastly different fields to identify common practices. There were no previous efforts to capture these common practices. The Agile Manifesto and Scrum can help you develop new products cheaply. Lean Startup can help you discover customer needs. Lean Manufacturing (sometimes called Toyota Production System) can help you improve manufacturing.
The Agile Canon is a formal set of practices that, in combination, successfully channel creativity in the service of an emergent goal. It includes the Agile Base Practices, universal to all agile efforts including corporate management, product design, software development, curriculum development, and manufacturing. The Agile Canon also includes field-specific Agile Frameworks, such as Business Agility, Lean Startup, Scrum, Design for Understanding, and Lean Manufacturing.