The Innovation Blind Spot: Why We Back the Wrong Ideas - and What to Do About It - Hardcover

Baird, Ross

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1944648615 ISBN 13: 9781944648619

Publisher: BenBella Books, 2017

Synopsis

The Innovation Blind Spot

About this title

About the Author

Ross Baird is an entrepreneur and investor who is best known for finding, developing, and investing in entrepreneurs in places and industries where most people aren’t looking. He founded Village Capital in 2009 and has worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs in over fifty countries since then. He has visited over a hundred cities worldwide by train, plane, and bus in an effort to find new entrepreneurs and help people supporting them, and he and Village Capital have partnered with over twenty Fortune 500 companies to help large institutions uncover new innovations. Before joining Village Capital, Ross worked for a venture capital firm and was on the founding team of four different startups. 

Ross and his work have been featured by more than fifty media outlets including the New York Times, Bloomberg Business Week, Inc., and FastCompany. He has also lectured in entrepreneurship at the University of Virginia since 2012. He has a MPhil from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar, and a BA from the University of Virginia, where he was a Truman Scholar and a Jefferson Scholar.

Review

 “Ross Baird is on a mission . . . [He is] working to empower communities around the country to invest for impact.”

—Devin Thorpe, Forbes 

“For the past seven years, Baird has been doggedly finding and developing successful businesses in downtrodden places.”

—Bloomberg Businessweek

“We know a lot about what it takes to generate new ideas—but so little about how to recognize the ones that are worth pursuing. The Innovation Blind Spot is here to change that. It’s a terrific read, with vivid data and memorable examples to help you stop betting on flops and spot the hits hiding right under your nose.”

—Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Originals and Give and Take 

“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, Ross 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, Ross shows us how to do just that.”

—Brad Feld, cofounder, Foundry Group, and author of Startup Communities 

“There's a myth that the innovation economy is a meritocracy, but unfortunately your background and your network still play a huge role in success. Ross makes a compelling case for how we can access the untapped potential in our innovation economy.”

—Donna Byrd, founding publisher of The Root and vice president of Digital Media at Univision Communications

“If you’re interested in understanding the root causes of why the American economy isn’t working, read The Innovation Blind Spot. Ross Baird highlights how most people and capital focus on only a couple of industries and a couple of cities—and how if we change how we think about solving problems, we can get better results for everyone.”  

—Andrew Yang, founder and CEO of Venture for America and author of Smart People Should Build Things

 

Edition details

• Publisher: BenBella Books
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1944648615
• ISBN 13: 9781944648619
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240