Taneja, H: Unscaled

The most successful startups of the present and future are turning the old rule on its head - bigger is not always better.

Throughout the twentieth century, technology and economics drove a dominant logic: bigger was almost always better. It was smart to scale up - to take advantage of classic economies of scale.

But in the unscaled economy, size and scale have become a liability. Today's most successful companies - Airbnb, Deliveroo, Stripe and Uber - have defied the traditional 'economies of scale' approach by renting scale instead of spending vast amounts of money building it. And a new generation of upstarts is using artificial intelligence to automate tasks that once required expensive investment, enabling them to grow big without the bloat of giant organisations.

In Unscaled, Hemant Taneja convincingly shows how the unscaled economy is remaking massive, deeply-rooted industries - including corporations, banks, farms, media conglomerates, energy systems, governments, and schools - and opening up fantastic possibilities for entrepreneurs, imaginative companies and resourceful individuals. Beyond that, it can be the model for solving some of the world's greatest problems, including climate change and soaring healthcare costs, potentially reversing many of the ills brought on by mass industrialization.

The unscale wave has only just started. To succeed in business today, companies, CEOs and leaders everywhere must unlearn what they have been taught - they must embrace an unscaled mindset.

Hemant Taneja is a managing director at General Catalyst, a venture capital firm with offices in San Francisco, Palo Alto, New York City, and Boston. Kevin Maney is a columnist for Newsweek.