Tonight I went to go see Peter Thiel speak at Stanford University. He co-founded Paypal, was an early investor in a bunch of companies (Facebook, LinkedIn, etc), and is a billionaire.
I jotted down some notes from the talk which I thought were interesting.
- Intensive vs. Extensive - He spent a bunch of time comparing these two types of innovation. Intensive is building something new and truly innovative. An example would be the Macintosh or Paypal – both blazed a trail to create something that had never been created before. It’s carries a higher risk of failure but also greater rewards. Extensive is building on ideas which are already in place. It can be a safer way to build a company, but not as lucrative. An example would be putting accounting software online. Or doing another social network.
- China - He compared China and the U.S. saying that China’s next 20 years of growth are clearly extensive. They can simply copy the model which is the U.S. and grow rapidly (build this many airports, this many steel mills, etc). The U.S. can’t afford to do that and has the much harder job of pursuing intensive growth. We can’t just make more doctors, lawyers, bankers, and houses. To grow we need to build stuff the world has never seen (technology).
To read the full, original article click on this link: Peter Thiel’s Thoughts On Tech Entrepreneurship | business
