Unscaled, Hemant Taneja
Unscaled, Hemant Taneja
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Unscaled
How AI and a New Generation of Upstarts Are Creating the Economy of the Future

Author: Hemant Taneja, Kevin Maney

Narrator: Sunil Malhotra

Unabridged: 8 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Published: 03/27/2018


Synopsis

Unscaled identifies the forces that are reshaping the global economy and turning one of the fundamental laws of business and society -- the economies of scale -- on its head.

An innovative trend combining technology with economics is unraveling behemoth industries -- including corporations, banks, farms, media conglomerates, energy systems, governments, and schools-that have long dominated business and society. Size and scale have become a liability. A new generation of upstarts is using artificial intelligence to automate tasks that once required expensive investment, and "renting" technology platforms to build businesses for hyper-focused markets, enabling them to grow big without the bloat of giant organizations.

In Unscaled, venture capitalist Hemant Taneja explains how the unscaled phenomenon allowed Warby Parker to cheaply and easily start a small company, build a better product, and become a global competitor in no time, upending entrenched eyewear giant Luxottica. It similarly enabled Stripe to take on established payment processors throughout the world, and Livongo to help diabetics control their disease while simultaneously cutting the cost of treatment. The unscaled economy is remaking massive, deeply rooted industries and opening up fantastic possibilities for entrepreneurs, imaginative companies, and resourceful individuals. It can be the model for solving some of the world's greatest problems, including climate change and soaring health-care costs, but will also unleash new challenges that today's leaders must address.

About Hemant Taneja

Hemant Taneja is an investor, founder, and author. He is the managing partner of the venture capital firm General Catalyst. Taneja and General Catalyst are investors in market-leading companies such as Airbnb, Commure, Stripe, Livongo (which was acquired for $18.5 billion, the largest transaction in digital health history to date), Samsara, Snap (NYSE: SNAP), Olive, Applied Intuition, Grammarly, Gusto, Ro, and Warby Parker. He serves on the Stanford School of Medicine Board of Fellows and has worked on climate and energy issues as the cofounder and chairman of Advanced Energy Economy. He is coauthor of Unhealthcare and Unscaled.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Daniel on July 03, 2018

Taneja is a venture capitalist and invests in lots of new companies, so his insights are useful at least for 3-5 years. Previously, successful companies grow bigger and bigger, and they scale up. Through mergers, they become truly gigantic firms and have many products and are competitive because the......more

Goodreads review by Laura on June 13, 2018

Fast read, quite thought-provoking. It's difficult to give this a rating... only time will tell how accurate many of Hemant's predictions are. That said, give this book a try if you want to wrap your head around AI and why personalization in all facets of life (education, media, consumer goods, etc.......more

Goodreads review by Akshith on May 05, 2019

Hemant does a great job in explaining his investment thesis: " the unwinding of scaled up industries into specialized firms that serve niche customers". He takes this thinking and dials it up to 11 to predict how this will effect each sector. Although he mentions the companies from his portfolio tha......more

Goodreads review by DoGG on April 06, 2021

In the 21st century corporations aimed to develop enough scale necessary to deliver mass market products and services (“What can we build for the most people?”). They achieved this by vertically integrating to control all aspects of production. Once they were big, this scale (i.e., low incremental c......more

Goodreads review by Kit on December 30, 2020

Even to this day, AI is still embryonic even though its practical implications are already bleeding into our day to day lives: our social media, our Google searches, our medical records and the content that suits our "profile". In this way, Unscaled is no different than most texts discussing the pos......more


Quotes

"Hemant Taneja, the author of Unscaled... says, he sees two trends-demand for hyperpersonalized products and entrepreneurs' ability to 'rent scale' in the cloud-that are putting incumbents at an increasing disadvantage."—Harvard BusinessReview

"The book explores how unscaling will affect six industries-energy, healthcare, education, finance, media, and consumer products-and how to benefit from this revolution."—Talent DevelopmentMagazine

"Hemant Taneja provides important insights on the possibilities for AI to transform fields ranging from education to healthcare. He equally shows the need for transparency and clear values in deploying these powerful new technologies."—David Kenny, senior vice president, IBM, Watson &Cloud Platform technologies

"Unscaled demystifies that little acronym with big meaning-'AI'-and lays out where you can participate in the revolution."—Carter Cast, clinical professor ofinnovation and entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School, NorthwesternUniversity

"A thought-provoking look at the technology that is changing the world of business and the benefits, pitfalls, and challenges for society as a whole."—Kenneth I. Chenault, former chief executive officer, AmericanExpress Company

"An important and fascinating read for anyone looking to better understand the forces driving innovation and disruption which are affecting every sector of our economy."—Penny Pritzker, chairman of PSP Capital Partners andformer US Secretary of Commerce

"Unscaled presents a paradigm shift in how we should think about the role of technology and policy in addressing the real threat of climate change.... Thoughtful innovation can help us take on some of the biggest challenges facing society."—Bill Ritter Jr., former Colorado governor and directorof the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University

"The world is changing rapidly. In Unscaled, visionary venture capitalist Hemant Taneja shows us how. Even in an industry as resistant to change as health care, data and technology are upending traditional models and ushering in a new era of precision. This book is for anyone who wants to understand how to leverage the economies of unscale to address the challenges of the modern world."—Lloyd B. Minor, MD, dean of the Stanford University School of Medicine