Technology is miraculous because it allows us to do more with less, ratcheting up our fundamental capabilities to a higher level. This would be depressing but for one crucial fact: humans are distinguished from other species by our ability to work miracles. Actually, if American business is going to succeed, we are going to need hundreds, or even thousands, of miracles. In a world of gigantic administrative bureaucracies both public and private, searching for a new path might seem like hoping for a miracle. Today’s “best practices” lead to dead ends the best paths are new and untried.

What happens when we’ve gained everything to be had from fine- tuning the old lines of business that we’ve inherited? Unlikely as it sounds, the answer threatens to be far worse than the crisis of 2008.

Unless they invest in the difficult task of creating new things, American companies will fail in the future no matter how big their profits remain today. The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1. Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. Of course, it’s easier to copy a model than to make something new. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won’t create a social net-work. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. Preface Every moment in business happens only once.

Zero to one book epub