Peter Thiel: belief

Transcript context

…You talk about vertical progress versus horizontal progress. I’m wondering, how does one create vertical progress? Do you have any tips for doing that? There’s no straightforward formula for innovation. It’s much easier to do horizontal progress, which I describe as globalization, copying things that work going from one to n, versus vertical progress, technology, doing new things, going from zero to one. Globalization, I think there is actually a formula. You can copy what’s working, try to mechanically apply it. There’s something scientific about globalization. There’s something deeply unscientific about the history of technology itself. Science starts with the number two, whereas every moment in the history of science, technology, business, I believe, happens only once. The next Mark Zuckerberg won’t start a social network, the next Larry Page won’t start a search engine. It’s always some idiosyncratic thing. It’s good to be passionate about something that you are good at, that other people are not doing. If you get those three things lined up, that’s a very good start. In order to go from zero to one in a nonprofit organization, or a political advocacy group, what would one have to do? What would be a key differentiator, or angle, to approach with it?…

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