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If we're looking at "entrepreneurs" as a source of growth, then yes, startups are what we're looking for. If you don't start that pizza business, I'll buy my p

If we're looking at "entrepreneurs" as a source of growth, then yes, startups are what we're looking for. If you don't start that pizza business, I'll buy my pizza somewhere else. Startups create new markets through innovation. A Facebook-like is like the pizza business. Facebook (or its ancestors) was the market creator. Uber has similarities with the pizza business, but it's all about transforming a business (taxi service) into something else. So it's between pizzas and Facebook. So I guess there are various levels of disruption or creation of the market. But the pizza business is probably at level 0 of disruption/creation. Think of Starbucks vs. your coffee shop...

dingaling 12y ago
> But the pizza business is probably at level 0 of disruption/creation. There are no pizza restaurant in my town, but plenty of Indian and Chinese take-aways and one each of the big three fast-food chains. So if a pizza business arrived it could be disruptive to the status quo, particularly if it offered something that the others didn't e.g. delivery beyond two miles or first-class vegetarian options. Another example of simple disruption is a shop which opened offering walk-in printing. You just pop your memory stick into the machine and hit 'print'. This completely undermined the library which previously had a monopoly on printing and which took > 15 minutes by the time you waited for a librarian to authorize the printing. Neither are particularly exciting, but both offer a disruptive service.
umanwizard 12y ago
Well, sure, you can argue about how you want to model it. But what you're referring to is pretty clearly not what the article is about. Especially since it mentions the historic role of immigrants as entrepreneurs and so on, which in my mind I closely associate with the trope of the small-business-owning first generation American.

dingaling 12y ago

> But the pizza business is probably at level 0 of disruption/creation. There are no pizza restaurant in my town, but plenty of Indian and Chinese take-aways and one each of the big three fast-food chains. So if a pizza business arrived it could be disruptive to the status quo, particularly if it offered something that the others didn't e.g. delivery beyond two miles or first-class vegetarian options. Another example of simple disruption is a shop which opened offering walk-in printing. You just pop your memory stick into the machine and hit 'print'. This completely undermined the library which previously had a monopoly on printing and which took > 15 minutes by the time you waited for a librarian to authorize the printing. Neither are particularly exciting, but both offer a disruptive service.

umanwizard 12y ago

Well, sure, you can argue about how you want to model it. But what you're referring to is pretty clearly not what the article is about. Especially since it mentions the historic role of immigrants as entrepreneurs and so on, which in my mind I closely associate with the trope of the small-business-owning first generation American.