Two Reasons Startups Are the Most Innovative Business Sector

Most people have a general understanding of how successful startups form—someone with a good idea and an entrepreneurial spirit gets financing, maybe from angel investors, venture capital, or crowdfunding. But it’s important for everyone to have a deeper knowledge and appreciation of the startup process.

Two general principles to keep in mind:

• Startups bridge the academic world, where many innovative ideas are born, with investors who provide capital and company founders who bring those ideas to reality.
• Startups are better positioned than big companies to accept how this process of innovation carries huge risks of failure and equally great rewards if successful.

My book, Startups & The Tech Revolution: The Essential Guide explains that executives of the big companies are not incentivized to take the risks that produce the technological leaps transforming the economy. Those executives are simply too busy running their current businesses or have too much inertia.

In our Technology Age, startups increasingly affect jobs, educational priorities, career paths, taxes, government budgets, and politics. Being able to understand and embrace the startup economy provides opportunities for people whether or not they are entrepreneurs themselves. They’ll have a jump in adapting their skills and preparing their families for the future.

People who see the changes wrought by startups as an opportunity will understand they can no longer train once for careers that carry them through to retirement. Technology will eliminate a lot of boring, routine, and dangerous work but require retooling skills over the years. They’ll demand support for such retraining from leaders in government, business, and the educational system. They’ll understand the money is available because tech startups have created enormous wealth.

My book tells how some universities are nurturing entrepreneurs on campus. The universities have created academic incubators—some very effective, some unfortunately just marketing gimmicks—to bring investors, professors, and other potential collaborators to meet with students who dream of founding a company.

In a simpler time, Americans would joke about liberal arts degrees, “That and 50 cents will get you a cup of coffee.” The value of a degree has risen almost as fast as the price of a coffee, but now the joke may be on those who don’t demand to learn the skills to be entrepreneurial or at least run in that company.

Learn more by checking out my book today, Startups & The Tech Revolution: The Essential Guide.