by Alexandre "Alex" Lazarow (Author)
The new playbook for innovation and startup success is emerging from beyond Silicon Valley--at the "frontier."
Startups
have changed the world. In the United States, many startups, such as
Tesla, Apple, and Amazon, have become household names. The economic
value of startups has doubled since 1992 and is projected to double
again in the next fifteen years.
For decades, the hot center of
this phenomenon has been Silicon Valley. This is changing fast. Thanks
to technology, startups are now taking root everywhere, from Delhi to
Detroit to Nairobi to Sao Paulo. Yet despite this globalization of
startup activity, our knowledge of how to build successful startups is
still drawn primarily from Silicon Valley.
As venture capitalist
Alexandre Lazarow shows in this insightful and instructive book, this
Silicon Valley "gospel" is due for a refresh--and it comes from what he
calls the "frontier," the growing constellation of startup ecosystems,
outside of the Valley and other major economic centers, that now
stretches across the globe. The frontier is a truly different world
where startups often must cope with political or economic instability
and lack of infrastructure, and where there might be little or no access
to angel investors, venture capitalists, or experienced employee pools.
Under
such conditions, entrepreneurs must be creators who build industries
rather than disruptors who change them because there are few existing
businesses to disrupt. The companies they create must be global from
birth because local markets are too small. They focus on resiliency and
sustainability rather than unicorn-style growth at any cost.
With rich and wide-ranging stories of frontier innovators from around the world, Out-Innovate is the new playbook for innovation--wherever it has the potential to happen.
