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The Innovation Stack
- Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time
- Narrated by: Jim McKelvey
- Length: 6 hrs and 23 mins
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Publisher's Summary
From the cofounder of Square, an inspiring and entertaining account of what it means to be a true entrepreneur and what it takes to build a resilient, world-changing company
In 2009, a St. Louis glassblowing artist and recovering computer scientist named Jim McKelvey lost a sale because he couldn't accept American Express cards. Frustrated by the high costs and difficulty of accepting credit card payments, McKelvey joined his friend Jack Dorsey (the cofounder of Twitter) to launch Square, a startup that would enable small merchants to accept credit card payments on their mobile phones. With no expertise or experience in the world of payments, they approached the problem of credit cards with a new perspective, questioning the industry's assumptions, experimenting and innovating their way through early challenges, and achieving widespread adoption from merchants small and large.
But just as Square was taking off, Amazon launched a similar product, marketed it aggressively, and undercut Square on price. For most ordinary startups, this would have spelled the end. Instead, less than a year later, Amazon was in retreat and soon discontinued its service. How did Square beat the most dangerous company on the planet? Was it just luck? These questions motivated McKelvey to study what Square had done differently from all the other companies Amazon had killed. He eventually found the key: a strategy he calls the Innovation Stack.
McKelvey's fascinating and humorous stories of Square's early days are blended with historical examples of other world-changing companies built on the Innovation Stack to reveal a pattern of ground-breaking, competition-proof entrepreneurship that is rare but repeatable.
The Innovation Stack is a thrilling business narrative that's much bigger than the story of Square. It is an irreverent first-person look inside the world of entrepreneurship, and a call to action for all of us to find the entrepreneur within ourselves and identify and fix unsolved problems - one crazy idea at a time.
Critic Reviews
"McKelvey tells the remarkable story of how with Square, he started a business that would transform an industry, along the way unlocking a whole new model for innovation. An inspiring call to action for entrepreneurs who want to tackle problems that affect our everyday lives, with perseverance and some crazy ideas." (Steve Case, chairman and CEO of Revolution, cofounder of AOL, and author of The Third Wave: An Entrepreneur's Vision of the Future)
"The Innovation Stack is a deeply useful book about the characteristics of successful companies and how and why to build one, complete with inspiring case studies that literally span centuries. But it’s also much more than that: a witty, humane exploration of living in the complicated, inequitable world we all share and are working to make it less so." (Eric Ries, entrepreneur and best-selling author of The Lean Startup)
"Who can say they went up against Amazon - and won? Jim McKelvey can, and this book tells how." (Peter Thiel, entrepreneur, investor, and author of Zero to One)
"Growing up in the Show Me State - aka Missouri - made me skeptical of everything...especially Jim McKelvey. I’d say more but I’m out of charact" (Jack Dorsey, cofounder and CEO of Twitter and Square)
What listeners say about The Innovation Stack
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Liam
- 10-10-2022
Great
Really insightful, great listen, found very interesting and useful —- would definitely recommend to anyone
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- Rolls
- 25-09-2020
Brilliant. Great presenter, great content
Lots of great small lessons to learn. Excellent narration. Prefect for business owners looking to understand how others do it.
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- Daniel Cleary
- 12-07-2021
Do you love business chat?
If you love businesses and the company Square you’ll love this book.
Slightly uplifting at the end.
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- Anonymous User
- 01-10-2023
A practical guide to thinking about differentiation
I much enjoyed this book. It is quite practical … indeed, while still getting through it, I must have sent a dozen messages to the ceo founders of businesses that I am working with. Having read hundreds of business books, it’s not often that I find myself gaining valuable new insights. Thank you Jim!
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- Anonymous User
- 21-07-2020
Great book
Awesome book. Not about payments or Square too much, so dont expect it to be that book. It does show what Jim learned throughout setting up Square and how he discovered the ‘innovation stack.’ Good for anyone setting up a biz or just interested in business in general. Highly recommend
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- navreet Reid
- 11-06-2021
A must read if you really want to understand entrepreneurship!!!
Brilliantly written and an easy listen. I learnt so many difficulties aspects of entrepreneurship and innovation stack. Gives you a fresh prospect on problem solving. I would listen to this audio book again.
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- Anonymous User
- 02-09-2021
Fantastic
One of the best audio books I’ve listened to in a long time. Great insights and takeaways.
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- VitaminB
- 15-11-2021
Authentic
I give up on most business books because the point is made early on and then repeated. This is very different. I was learning something new, and being entertained, from beginning to end. And having the author read it gives such authenticity that it’s hard to stop listening.
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- Michelle Waugh
- 14-08-2020
A great book about innovation and entrepreneurship
There’s a lot going on in this book- not least of which are forays into history, retrospective analysis on how the author built a successful innovative company, the why’s and hows of how businesses stay ahead of the competition, biography ... like I said- there’s a lot in this book but it’s basically excellent because it comes from ‘the horses mouth’ as they say. Reading about innovation from uni course work and academics leaves me cold, but hearing about how a true entrepreneur was able to create value and grow the pie for all as well as address equitable pricing in the payment sector was really fascinating. I truly appreciate that Jim went back to analyse how this all fell into place so he could share this knowledge, and I loved his work on delving through history to find similar stories, particularly his account of A.P. Giannini. A lot of lessons learnt.
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- Rami de Marchi
- 03-12-2022
Thank you for being my new mentor Jim!
Authentic, inspiring, and powerful! Truly a privilege to receive the distilled wisdoms of such a passionate, first principles thinker and insatiable ‘doer’! Bravo Jim! And thank you 🙏🙏
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