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Founder of Village Capital identifies the "blind spots" in the current innovation economy and reveals how investors can find the groundbreaking opportunities that too often go overlooked.
List of contents
Foreword
Introduction
PART I: THE INNOVATION BLIND SPOT
Chapter 1: What Happened to the American Dream?
Chapter 2: Chasing Whales and Unicorns: Why the Venture Capital Process Causes Us to Miss Out on Most Ideas
Chapter 3: People and Place: It's Who You Know
Chapter 4: The Two-Pocket Mentality: How Short-Term Thinking Sets Us Up for Long-Term Failure
PART II: THE EMERGING MOVEMENT: ILLUMINATING THE BLIND SPOTS
Chapter 5: Changing the Process: Why Entrepreneurs Are Better Judges of New Ideas Than Expert Investors
Chapter 6: Building the Pipeline
Chapter 7: One-Pocket Thinking: Why Do We Know What Things Cost but Not What They're Worth?
PART III: SOMEDAY IS TODAY: HOW TO OVERCOME INNOVATION BLIND SPOTS
Chapter 8: How Investors Can Find Ideas Where No One Else Is Looking
Chapter 9: How Do I Become a One-Pocket Investor?
Chapter 10: How Do I Illuminate Blind Spots in a Big Company?
Chapter 11: How Government Can Play a Role in Closing Innovation Blind Spots
Chapter 12: What Do I Do If I've Got the Next Great Idea?
PART IV: TOPOPHILIA
Chapter 13: "We Are the They": Building an Ecosystem
Chapter 14: What Can Happen to the American Dream?
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Notes
Index
About the author
Ross Baird
Summary
Our innovation economy is broken. But there's good news: The ideas that will solve our problems are hiding in plain sight.
While big companies in the American economy have never been more successful, entrepreneurial activity is near a 30-year low. More businesses are dying than starting every day. Investors continue to dump billions of dollars into photo-sharing apps and food-delivery services, solving problems for only a wealthy sliver of the world's population, while challenges in health, food security, and education grow more serious.
In The Innovation Blind Spot, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Ross Baird argues that the innovations that truly matter don't see the light of day—for reasons entirely of our own making. A handful of people in a handful of cities are deciding, behind closed doors, which entrepreneurs get a shot to succeed. And most investors are what Baird calls "two-pocket thinkers"—artificially separating their charitable work from their day job of making a profit.
The resulting system creates rising income inequality, stifled entrepreneurial ambition, social distrust, and political uncertainty. Our innovation problem makes all our other problems harder to solve. In this book, Baird demonstrates how and where to find better ideas by lifting up people, places, and industries that are often overlooked. What's more, Baird ultimately outlines how to create long-term success through "one-pocket thinking"—eliminating the blind spot that separates "what we do for a living" and "what we really care about."
Additional text
“A pioneering fusion of venture capital and crowd intelligence.”
—Matt Bishop, editor for the Economist and author of Philanthrocapitalism
“Baird’s motivation for writing the book comes from an insider’s knowledge that the system isn’t allocating resources to the best and the brightest, just to the best connected and most visible.”
—Fast Company
“Every entrepreneur with a great idea should have a fundamental right to start a business. But today, far too many barriers in society prevent the best people from competing. In this book, Baird outlines compelling strategies to find the best innovations—no matter where they are.”
—Wendy Guillies, president and CEO, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
“In this time of seismic shifts, our businesses, our governments, and our communities need to work together for our society to succeed—and we need new ideas to get there. Baird identifies the outliers that no one’s betting on and compellingly outlines how we can bring them into the mainstream.”
—Governor Deval L. Patrick, managing director, Bain Capital Double Impact
“Every single city and community has the power to change the world. But to realize that power, we have to find the ideas and entrepreneurs that people aren’t paying attention to. In The Innovation Blind Spot, Baird shows us how to do just that.”
—Brad Feld, cofounder, Foundry Group
