Jason Furman's Reviews > Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Zero to One is lecture notes from a course Peter Thiel taught on startups, it is filled with practical tips and advice but also a broader theory of innovation. I have not read any other books in this genre, the business tips seemed unhelpful or superfluous depending on whether you had innovative ideas already or not (and some were almost contradictory, like dominate a small market and work your way out, but if you are in too small a market you will not be able to work your way out).

But the book does an interesting and provocative job of fleshing out the thesis that progress really depends on genuinely new inventions (going from zero to one) rather than incremental improvements (the 1 to infinity) that he associates with globalization. It is not obvious that this is always right, while Thiel is scathing about the solar industries failure to generate large stock market valuations he does not appreciate the steady progress in the efficiency of solar power. And one implication he takes from his thesis is a paen to monopoly and borderline contempt for competition, which omits much of the motivation and source of innovation itself.