Alejandro Alex Lazarow - Out-Innovate: How Global Entrepreneurs--from Delhi to Detroit--Are Rewriting the Rules of Silicon Valley

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Copyright 2020 Alexandre Lazarow

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to , or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of the books publication but may be subject to change.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Lazarow, Alexandre, author.

Title: Out-innovate : how global entrepreneursfrom Delhi to Detroitare rewriting the rules of Silicon Valley / Alexandre Lazarow.

Description: Boston, MA : Harvard Business Review Press, [2020] | Includes index. |

Identifiers: LCCN 2019046745 | ISBN 9781633697584 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781633697591 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: New business enterprises. | Entrepreneurship. | Success in business. | GlobalizationEconomic aspects. | Creative ability in business.

Classification: LCC HD62.5 .L39 2020 | DDC 658.1/1dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046745

ISBN:978-1-63369-758-4

eISBN: 978-1-63369-759-1

The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48-1992.

To the men and women in the arena

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

THEODORE ROOSEVELT

We need to out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world.

BARACK OBAMA

Contents

Introduction

Beyond Silicon Valley

Xavier Helgesen was troubled. He had just returned to his home base of Arusha, Tanzania, after weeks spent pitching Zola, his startup, to Silicon Valley investors. It was 2014, two years into the journey, and Zola already had thousands of paying customers and a large potential market. But Xavier had secured only a fraction of the capital that a pedestrian San Francisco startup might expect to raise in months.

Xavier had co-founded Zola with Erica Mackey and Joshua Pierce to tackle a seemingly intractable problem: eight hundred million people in Africa live offgrid and are vulnerable to systematic disadvantages resulting from a lack of electricity. These hardships include respiratory health problems from kerosene smoke inhalation, lower educational attainment due to limited light sources, and the inability to plug in mobile phones and thereby access the opportunities of the digital world.