ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book focuses on a factor that has contributed to the recent spike in technological innovation. This factor is often overlooked in discussions of technology. The book concerns the culture of technological innovation, rather than technology itself. It also concerns the way people coordinate, share, work and collaborate to produce innovation. This factor is hacking. Hacker culture emerged in the early days of computing. It scaled in the open source software movement in the nineties and fed into startup entrepreneurship in the aughts. The book features hacker entrepreneurs, like Dean McEvoy and Phil Morle, cofounders of the Australian startup Spreets, who hack new business models by turning risky assumptions into experiments. It synthesizes the work of leading business theorists and entrepreneurs including Steve Blank, Eric Ries and John Kotter, and hackers including Eric Raymond and Linus Torvalds.
