Several people helped and supported this work. Davis Dyer at the Winthrop Group played an instrumental role in guiding the authors throughout, while Fred Dalzell of that firm assisted greatly with research. Much of the book germinated at Harvard Kennedy School's Mossavar‐Rahmani Center for Business and Government, where Howard Wolk served as a senior fellow from 2012 to 2014. He led a study group on entrepreneurship entitled “Bigger, Better, Faster, Cheaper.” Thanks go to Richard Cavanagh, John Haigh, Richard Zeckhauser, Scott Leland, and Jennifer Nash, all of whom provided tremendous support during and after that period, as well as numerous colleagues and students who provided feedback and support during the project's early days.

John Landry thanks his professors from the Department of History at Brown University, especially his dissertation advisor, Naomi Lamoreaux.

Many other people were extremely generous with their time in reading portions of the manuscript, often early on when the text was quite rough. We would like to thank Bill Aulet, Alex Berger, Jeffrey Blecher, Robert Brennan, Jeffrey Bussgang, Jonathan Chang, David Cowen, Justin Fox, Jeffrey Gordon, Michael Greeley, Michael Horowitz, Thomas Jones, Jeffrey Kushner, Vikram Mansharamani, Jeffrey Rayport, Mitch Roberts, Stephen Rosen, Devjani Roy, Gabe Scheffler, John Sinclair, Austin Slaymaker, Alex Slawsby, Gabe Smallman, Michael Vorenberg, and Jeffrey Wolk for their heavy lifting and thoughtful critiques.

We also thank the team at Wiley, including Bill Falloon, Purvi Patel, Samantha Wu, Priyadharshini Arumugam, Ranjith Kumar Thanigasalam, Samantha Enders, and Amy Handy, as well as Silvana Bouhlal and Peggy Wright for assistance with many early drafts.

Howard would like to make a special acknowledgment to his father, Sidney, an entrepreneur and company builder whose spirit of optimism and respect for people is a continual source of inspiration and admiration, and to the many, many associates at all levels within the Cross Country organization over the years who have worked together to make it a shared success.

Finally, we thank our families, especially our wives, Candice Wolk and Rochelle Rosen. A project of this sort takes enormous amounts of time and can become an emotional and intellectual distraction. We could not have completed it without their support and enthusiasm at each stage.