Based on extensive research and real-world examples, Pattern Breakers upends accepted wisdom about how to achieve breakthrough success, and provides a playbook for anyone launching a startup or creating a new product.
Pattern Breakers had its roots in the time when Mike Maples, a seasoned venture capitalist, was stumped, unable to get a grip on why some businesses he funded-Twitter, Twitch, and Okta, for example-took off, while others, some deemed “most likely to succeed,” shut their doors despite doing everything right. Was it dumb luck that separated gold from dross?
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What Maples and Stanford University's Peter Ziebelman discovered contradicts accepted wisdom and upends today's formulaic approach to entrepreneurship: that one should look for a big open market, talk to prospective customers to find their highest needs, their “pain points” in that market, and then build what is missing.
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Rather, patterns are broken and the potential for breakthrough opportunity created when inflection points-events that offer the potential for new empowering capabilities-are harnessed, transforming how people think, work, feel, and act. Uber and Lyft, for example broke the pattern of transportation by harnessing the power of the GPS-enabled smartphone. The Covid pandemic spurred telemedicine.
Pattern-breaking ideas like these unlock different powers and radically change the rules, driven by people with the independent-mindedness and courage to divert from the consensus.
With intriguing and entertaining storytelling based on a lifetime of experience, Pattern Breakers vividly illustrates what differentiates breakthrough ideas from those that initially seem promising but that meet with mediocre results, and why others that initially seem unworthy-even idiotic-end up radically changing how people live.*
