America was a start-up political entity and its citizens innovated and built new organizations and models as they crossed the continent. Today Americans take this pioneer attitude (see Frederick Jackson Turner) and use it to build start-ups to capitalize on change and challenge.

My good friend Richard Florida has an insightful piece on American Exceptionalism as a start-up nation. From The Atlantic website:

America is a Start-Up Nation: a living example of the process that Joseph Schumpeter memorably dubbed “creative destruction.” Other nations may create superior products and even build world-dominating industries, but the very essence of America’s economic and cultural DNA is its ability to generate ever-new generations of startups, spearheading new technologies and business models, creating and transforming whole industries, powering job generation, and raising living standards. While other nations deepen and expand their existing industries and technologies — Germany turns out more and better cars; Japan and Korea stamp out bigger and higher-definition TVs — America generates startups that forever shift the nation’s whole economic structure.

via How Startups Have Changed the Way American Business Thinks – Richard Florida – Technology – The Atlantic.