Conclusion: The End Game

This chapter (Conclusion: The End Game) reviews the results of the previous chapters and poses important questions that potential investors, entrepreneurs, and managers need to ask prior to selecting projects to develop. The chapter then considers the importance of rethinking traditional end game strategies both to individual firms and to national competitiveness. It argues that startups in particular need to move away from end game strategies focused on their being acquired by established companies and toward optimizing their chances of surviving and growing as a firm. We contend that those young firms that succeed in securing the critical levers of survival are the best candidates to do this, and that ultimately their ability to realize the full economic payoff for entering into radical innovation depends on them following this difficult but, in the end, rewarding path.