Disruption Games: How to Thrive on Serial Failure

by Trond Undheim

Overview

Common wisdom says that success breeds success, and indeed this is how most VCs pick startups, businesses select talent, and singles search for dates. In contrast, the evidence from science to startups shows that only repeated failure breeds success.

In Disruption Games, MIT’s Trond Undheim reveals how companies (and individuals) can build a successful, multi-faceted innovation portfolio and may experience deep learning from failed initiatives.

Over the next few years, successfully managing failure will become a necessary growth strategy for any individual, firm or collective. Are you prepared?

Disruption Games fulfills the need for actionable insight on what’s truly driving change and how to become a change-maker, not just be affected by it.

Trond Arne Undheim is a futurist, speaker, entrepreneur and former director of MIT Startup Exchange, based outside of Boston. He is the CEO and cofounder of Yegii, a search engine for industry professionals, providing collective intelligence.

He holds a PhD on the future of work and artificial intelligence and cognition. He has accelerated four unicorns and helped launch over 50 startups. A former MIT Sloan School of Management Senior Lecturer, WPP and Oracle executive and EU National Expert, he writes for Fortune and Cognoscenti, and has been featured in print media and television. His next book will be on the future of technology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781647647285
Publisher:	Atmosphere Press
Publication date:	05/01/2020
Pages:	226
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.52(d)

About the Author

Trond is a futurist, speaker, entrepreneur and former director of MIT Startup Exchange based outside of Boston, MA. He is the CEO and cofounder of Yegii, a tech insight platform that helps industry professionals navigate disruption.

He holds a PhD on the future of work and artificial intelligence and cognition. He has accelerated four unicorns and helped launch over 50 startups. A former MIT Sloan School of Management Senior Lecturer, WPP and Oracle Executive and EU National Expert, he writes for Fortune and Cognoscenti, and has been featured in print media and television. His first book was Leadership from Below (2008).

Editorial Reviews

Advance praise for Disruption Games:

"Through MIT, Trond has worked with some of the best startups in the world. Read this book for insights on what it took for them to succeed. Part business, part personal development, Disruption Games provides a blueprint of practical ways to jumpstart successful innovation through examining failure."
—Brent Hoberman, Cofounder, Founders Forum, Lastminute.com, Made.com

"Even though I was an experienced founder, I have to say the partnerships Trond facilitated when he ran the startup program at MIT ILP were instrumental to our launch and success."
—Natan Linder, Cofounder of Formlabs (3D printing) and Tulip Interfaces (advanced manufacturing app)

"I cannot think of a better guide to the disruptive world that founders and executives inhabit."
—James Mawson, CEO and Founder, Global Corporate Venturing

From the Publisher

2020-05-01
A business book on the nature of startup failure and success.

As this work begins, entrepreneur Undheim, who previously wrote Leadership From Below (2008), immediately tackles the age-old idea that success breeds success, citing a much broader and more flexible notion of what leads to success in venture capitalism and startups. In these pages, he seeks to differentiate between simple failure—in which nothing is advanced, no attitudes are changed, and nothing is learned—and something he calls “reflexive failure,” an entirely richer and more fruitful process. For failure to be instructive, Undheim writes, “it must have a deep cost in time and energy.” People shouldn’t seek out failure, of course, but they should seek risks, which can very often not work out as intended. The author urges readers to get a feel for the rules of disruption while always keeping in mind the potential downsides of both failure and success. Building a startup demands a lot of attention—“sometimes more [than] you have to give,” Undheim writes. “The risk is high. Is it truly worth risking your kids’ college savings? Your job? Your ability to pay the mortgage?” In clear, engaging prose, the author offers many specific examples; the sheer number of unsuccessful startups mentioned in these pages is, in its own strange way, curiously uplifting. There’s also plenty of insightful generalization, as when the author reminds readers, for instance, that the process of innovation isn’t simply mechanistic, because businesses are social systems governed by many interlocking forces. Undheim’s book is very clearly not for beginners, but experienced venture capitalists will find much of his outside-the-box thinking to be thought-provoking.

An intriguing learn-from-failure investment manual with a hard-edged practical side.

Kirkus Reviews