The Rise of the Rest: How Entrepreneurs in Surprising Places Are Building the New American Dream

Abstract

The spatial unevenness of rates of entrepreneurship and innovation are an enduring theme within the fi eld of economic geography. More recently, a lack of entrepreneurial and innovative capacity and capability have been identi fi ed as a cause for many cities and regions becoming what are considered by some as left behind places both economically and socially. Although this is rightly the case, the fi eld is still seeking to grapple with establishing plausible and realistic solutions to tackling the long-term problems these cities and regions face. An emerging and potentially powerful stream of research has started to emerge indicating that some so-called left behind places have begun a journey of new path creation based on entrepreneurial endeavor, which has led to the development of new innovative fi rms in growing industries. Nevertheless, much of the literature takes a relatively downbeat approach, suggesting that a small band of winning cities and regions will continue to develop and advance at the expense of the laggards. The Rise of the Rest represents an engaging and enlightening account as to how this zero-sum theory does not necessarily need to be the case and provides a somewhat different philosophical counterweight to some streams of scholarly work. Indeed, The Rise of the Rest is not written by an academic, but rather by Steve Case, the founder of America Online (AOL) and now a leading venture capitalist. The book tells his story as to how he initiated a major venture fi nance program — also called the Rise of the Rest — that has sought to trigger new entrepreneurship and innovation in cities and regions in the US outside the traditional hotspots on the nation ’ s east and west coasts.