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The Innovation Stack

Jim McKelvey

288 Pages
2020
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The Innovation Stack - Summary

The Innovation Stack is a compelling entrepreneurial journey that chronicles how Jim McKelvey, alongside Jack Dorsey, built Square into a revolutionary payment processing company. Through a combination of personal anecdotes, historical examples, and business insights, McKelvey reveals how solving problems through unconventional methods can create companies that are virtually competition-proof. The book introduces the concept of the Innovation Stack - a series of interconnected solutions that build upon each other to create a unique and defensible business model.

Key Ideas

1

Problem-Solving Through Fresh Perspectives

The power of approaching industry challenges as an outsider enabled Square to revolutionize payment processing. McKelvey demonstrates how his lack of payment industry experience actually became an advantage, allowing him to question established norms and create innovative solutions that industry veterans had overlooked.

2

Building Resilient Business Models

The Innovation Stack methodology shows how creating multiple interconnected solutions provides a natural defense against competition. When Amazon attempted to compete with Square, they couldn't simply copy one feature - they would have needed to replicate an entire ecosystem of innovations, which proved insurmountable.

3

Entrepreneurial Persistence

Success in groundbreaking ventures requires embracing uncertainty and maintaining resilience through numerous failures. McKelvey illustrates how world-changing companies are built through constant iteration and the willingness to solve problems that haven't been solved before.

FAQ's

An Innovation Stack is a series of interrelated solutions and innovations that work together to solve complex business problems. It's not just one breakthrough idea, but rather a collection of interconnected solutions that make a business model unique and difficult to replicate.

Square survived because they had built a complex Innovation Stack that Amazon couldn't easily replicate. Their solutions were so deeply interconnected and tailored to their specific market that even Amazon's vast resources couldn't effectively reproduce the entire ecosystem.

While the Innovation Stack approach is most powerful when solving previously unsolved problems, the principles can be applied to any business seeking to create sustainable competitive advantages. However, it requires a commitment to genuine innovation and the willingness to question industry assumptions.

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