New to Big
by David S. Kidder & Christina Wallace · 2019
In a nutshell
A book that teaches leaders in established organizations how to adopt startup-style innovation practices—thinking like entrepreneurs, investing like venture capitalists, and building a repeatable system for breakthrough growth. Highly relevant for startup founders and operators focused on scaling and institutionalizing innovation.
New to Big
Category: Disruption & Innovation
Brand: Penguin Random House
Website:
Overview
"New to Big" is a business book that teaches leaders in established organizations how to build a repeatable, startup-style innovation system. It explains how large, legacy companies can systematically discover, validate, and scale new growth opportunities by adopting the tools, mindsets, and investment approaches used by entrepreneurs and venture capitalists.
Key Concepts
- New-to-big growth: Focus on discovering and building new businesses from scratch inside established organizations, not just expanding existing ones.
- Growth Operating System (Growth OS): A proposed, permanent capability inside a company that structures how new growth is found, funded, and scaled.
- Ladder vs. moonshot: Emphasizes building an ongoing, systematic “ladder to the moon” (continuous innovation engine) rather than relying on one-off innovation “moonshots.”
- Borrowing from startups and VCs: Adapts entrepreneurial and venture capital tools, systems, and mindsets for use in large, established companies.
- Offense-focused growth: Positions legacy companies to proactively “go on offense” and compete for the future, rather than only optimizing current operations.
Features
- Explains the conflict between operational efficiency/bureaucracy and new growth creation in large organizations.
- Provides a blueprint for installing a permanent growth capability (the Growth OS) inside established companies.
- Describes tools and systems drawn from:
- Early-stage entrepreneurship (e.g., experimentation, validation, lean approaches).
- Venture capital (e.g., portfolio thinking, staged investment, evidence-based bets).
- Focuses on creating always-on growth, not one-time innovation initiatives.
- Oriented toward:
- Corporate leaders and executives in large, legacy firms.
- Startup founders and operators who want to understand how to scale and institutionalize innovation.
- Connects organizational design (processes, governance, investment decisions) with the ability to repeatedly discover and scale new business opportunities.
Authors
David Kidder
- Entrepreneur and angel investor in 40+ companies.
- Co-founder and CEO of Bionic, a firm focused on building new growth capabilities in large enterprises using venture and startup models.
- Former co-founder and CEO of Clickable; co-founder of SmartRay Network.
- Recipient of Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year (2008).
- Creator and co-author of The Intellectual Devotional series and The Startup Playbook.
Christina Wallace
- Vice President of Growth at Bionic.
- Serial entrepreneur and co-host of the podcast “The Limit Does Not Exist.”
- Founded BridgeUp: STEM, a computer science education startup at the American Museum of Natural History.
- Founding director of Startup Institute New York.
- Co-founder and former CEO of Quincy Apparel.
- Holds undergraduate degrees from Emory University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
- No pricing information is provided on the referenced content. The book is a commercial publication available through standard book retailers.
Tags
- Innovation
- Scaling
- Ecosystem
Reference
New to Big — publisher / official page. Summary adapted from the Awesome Startup Books collection.
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