Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs from Delhi to Detroit Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley, reviewed

By Simon Cocking, review of Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs from Delhi to Detroit Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley,  by  Alexandre “Alex” Lazarow available from April 7th, from Harvard Business Review Press and also from Amazon here.

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 can now take root anywhere–and they are, 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–over the years, countless books, blogs, and speeches have codified this model, prescribing what a startup should look like and how it should be run.

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.

Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs from Delhi to Detroit Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley, reviewed

This is a timely and interesting book, and a pleasant change from the overly Silicon Valley focussed approach that many discussions of VCs and startups can drift towards sometimes. At one point in the book there is a good comment about rather than looking to brand somewhere as Silicon Savanah, they should just call it Kenya. This encapsulates the concepts and stories that Lazarow is trying to get across – there is more to the world than just a US facing take on entrepreneurship.

Lazarow takes us on a tour across mostly African and Asia to look at interesting and innovative startups, who have thrived in their own locale, often establishing their own best practices which are innovative and differing in approach to previous businesses. It is rare that one size fits all, and so these case studies help to illustrate this point. Across various chapters he then aims to draw out useful and relevant takeaways to help readers to gather a template of insights to help those looking to launch their own businesses too.

Entrepreneurs outside tech hubs don’t operate in the Silicon Valley way — and they’re achieving outsize success. @Alex_Lazarow https://t.co/wMN7HqFBz5

— Harvard Business Review (@HarvardBiz) March 6, 2020

The book is written in an accessible and engaging way, we found it useful, interesting and positive to read about businesses from less well-documented parts of the world. Well worth checking out if you want to learn more about many of the interesting successes taking place around us.

In #SiliconValley model, #startups are laser focused, with an asset-light modus operandi enabled by a rich tapestry of companies.

Yet for most of the world, this model is impractical.

Startups build the full stack. https://t.co/HbOTyuGh1H

— Alexandre Lazarow (@Alex_Lazarow) April 1, 2020

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