In the book The Innovation Stack[1]: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time, we learn about a St. Louis glassblowing artist and recovering computer scientist named Jim McKelvey[2], who lost a sale because he couldn't accept American Express cards in 2009. McKelvey was frustrated by the high costs and difficulty of accepting credit card payments, so he joined his friend Jack Dorsey[3] (the co-founder of Twitter[4]) to launch Square,[5] a startup that would enable small merchants to accept credit card payments on their mobile phones. 

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Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square and author of The Innovation Stack.

Square was four years old and was under direct attack from Amazon. McKelvey reveals the business strategy that made Square impenetrable -- what he calls the Innovation Stack. After finding out that major credit card companies were profiting off small businesses at a rate of forty-five times higher than big billion-dollar corporations, McKelvey realized that his problem was a big issue for a lot of people, and a good reason to start a company. 

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Jim McKelvey and Jack Dorsey, co-founders of Square.

"I've undertaken a dozen projects that people have called crazy. I've made a living as an artist and started a glassblowing studio. I've founded companies in the fields of software, book printing, roofing, and payments. I launched a non-profit to solve the national shortage of programmers. I'm currently trying to give people control of their online identities. I have no idea what, if anything, these organizations have in common except that at the core is a problem that I care about." -- Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, serial entrepreneur, author.

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Jack Dorsey's drawing[6] in 2009 illustrates how the smartphone

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