“Zero to One”

Jeremy Fojut

Co-founder and chief idea officer | NEWaukee

As chief idea officer at NEWaukee, Jeremy Fojut is always innovating–and thinking about the process of innovating.

One of his favorite books on the subject is, “Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future” by PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel. Fojut refers back to it frequently for its refreshingly contrarian insight on idea generation.

“It challenges a lot of traditional thinking about it,” Fojut said.

Every innovation is new and unique, Thiel says, so if you’re copying Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, you’re not learning from their examples of originality. While most companies imitate an existing idea and iterate on it via innovation, or “1 to n,” new ideas take the entrepreneur from zero to 1 and help build the future.

“The most important thing I think he says is, strength is new thinking. It’s more important than nimbleness,”Fojut said. “No innovation has happened by groupthink.”