Different years seem to have different truths. For example, while 1968 was a struggle for freedom, with mass protests erupting throughout the world, 1989, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the invention of the World Wide Web, seemed to fulfill that promise. Other years have had other truths.
I have a strong sense that 2019 will be remembered as a pivotal year. It has been, to a large degree, a year of alternative truths that will need to be resolved in the years ahead. The books that we publish and read will play an important role in establishing which truths we are willing to accept.
That’s why books are so important. They help us establish today’s truths and record them for posterity. Often, we find that truths established today are thoroughly debunked for at some future time, while some neglected truths are later uncovered and brought to the fore. Here’s my list of the books I’ve read and written about over the past year. Let them be judged kindly.
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Today, it’s hard to think of Netflix as anything but an incredible success. Its business has grown at breakneck speed and now streams to 190 countries, yet it has also been consistently profitable, earning over $1 billion last year. With hit series like Orange is the New Black and Stranger Things, it broke the record for Emmy Nominations last year.
Most of all, the company has consistently disrupted the media business through its ability to relentlessly innovate. Its online subscription model upended the movie rental business and drove industry giant Blockbuster into bankruptcy. Later, it pioneered streaming video and introduced binge watching to the world.
Ordinarily, a big success like Netflix would offer valuable lessons for the rest of us. Unfortunately its story has long been shrouded in myth and misinformation. That’s why Netflix Co-Founder Marc Randolph’s new book, That Will Never Work, is so valuable. It not only sets the story straight, it offers valuable insight into how to create a successful business.
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In November 1989, there were two watershed events that would change the course of world history. The fall of the Berlin Wall would end the Cold War and open up markets across the world. That very same month, Tim Berners-Lee would create the World Wide Web and usher in a new technological era of networked computing.
It was a time of great optimism. Books like Francis Fukayama’s The End of History predicted a capitalist, democratic utopia, while pundits gushed over the seemingly neverending parade of “killer apps,” from email and e-commerce to social media and the mobile web. The onward march of history seemed unstoppable.
Today, 30 years on, it’s time to take stock and the picture is somewhat bleak. Instead of a global technological utopia, there are a number of worrying signs ranging from income inequality to the rise of popular authoritarianism. The fact is that technology and globalization have failed us. It’s time to address some very real problems.
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When the physicist Richard Feynman took the podium to give the commencement speech at CalTech in 1974, he told the strange story of cargo cults. In certain islands in the South Pacific, he explained, tribal societies had seen troops build airfields during World War and were impressed with the valuable cargo that arrived at the bases.
After the troops left, the island societies built their own airfields, complete with mock radios, aircraft and mimicked military drills in the hopes of attracting cargo themselves. It seems more than a little silly, and of course, no cargo every came. Yet these tribal societies persisted in their strange behaviors.
Feynman’s point was that we can’t merely mimic behaviors and expect to get results. Yet even today, nearly a half century later, many executives and business strategists have failed to learn that simple lesson by attempting to inject “science” into strategy. The truth is that while strategy can be informed by science, it can never be, and shouldn’t be, truly scientific.
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Take a moment to think about what the world must have looked like to J.P. Morgan a century ago, in 1919. He was not only an immensely powerful financier with access to the great industrialists of the day, but also an early adopter of new technologies. One of the first electric generators was installed at his home.
The disruptive technologies of the day, electricity and internal combustion, were already almost 40 years old, but had little measurable economic impact. Life largely went on as it always had. That would quickly change over the next decade when those technologies would drive a 50-year boom in productivity unlike anything the world had ever seen before.
It is very likely that we are at a similar point now. Despite significant advances in technology, productivity growth has been depressed for most of the last 50 years. Over the next ten years, however, we’re likely to see that change as nascent technologies hit their stride and create completely new industries. Here’s what you’ll need to know to compete in the new era.
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Chris Dixon, who invested early in companies ranging from Warby Parker to Kickstarter, once wrote that the next big thing always starts out looking like a toy. That’s certainly true of artificial intelligence, which started out playing games like chess, go and playing humans on the game show Jeopardy!
Yet today, AI has become so pervasive we often don’t even recognize it anymore. Besides enabling us to speak to our phones and get answers back, intelligent algorithms are often working in the background, providing things like predictive maintenance for machinery and automating basic software tasks.
As the technology becomes more powerful, it’s also forcing us to ask some uncomfortable questions that were once more in the realm of science fiction or late-night dorm room discussions. When machines start doing things traditionally considered to be uniquely human, we need to reevaluate what it means to be human and what is to be a machine.
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“Revolution” is a term that gets thrown around a lot. There was an Industrial Revolution powered by steam and then another one powered by oil and electricity. The Green Revolution transformed the way we fed ourselves. Many political revolutions have overthrown powerful regimes and the digital revolution changed the way we work with information.
My friend Srdja Popović, who helped lead the Bulldozer Revolution that overthrew Slobodan Milošević in Serbia, told me that the goal of a revolution should be to become mainstream, to be mundane and ordinary. If you are successful it should be difficult to explain what was won because the previous order seems so unbelievable.
The problem with most would-be revolutionaries is that they seek exactly the opposite. All too often, they seek attention, excitement and crowds of admiring fans. Yet all that noise is likely to create enemies just as fast as it makes friends. True revolutions aren’t won in the streets or on the airwaves, but through smart strategies that transform basic beliefs.
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Silicon Valley is often known as a cut-throat, technocratic place where the efficiency of algorithms often define success. Competition is ferocious and the pace of disruption and change can be dizzying. It’s not the type of environment where soft skills are valued particularly highly or even at all.
So it’s somewhat ironic that Bill Campbell became a Silicon Valley legend by giving hugs and professing love to those he worked with. As coach to executives ranging from Steve Jobs to the entire Google executive team, Campbell preached and practiced a very personal style of business.
Yet while I was reading Trillion Dollar Coach in which former Google executives explain Campbell’s leadership principles, it became clear why he had such an impact. Even in Silicon Valley, technology will only take you so far. The success of a business, ultimately depends on the success of the people in it. To compete over the long haul, that’s where you need to focus.
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The history of technological advancement is marked by milestones. Einstein published his theory of relativity. Fleming’s discovered penicillin. Watson and Crick uncovered the structure of DNA. While none of these had any practical significance at the time — and wouldn’t for decades — they all ushered in new eras of technology.
Google’s recent announcement that it had achieved quantum supremacy can be seen in a similar light. While the company proved that its quantum computer could solve a particular problem in minutes that would take a conventional supercomputer thousands of years, that problem itself is of little practical value.
However, the same could be said about the achievements of Einstein, Fleming and Watson and Crick. They were important not in and of themselves, but because of the possibilities they would unleash later on. The truth is that quantum supremacy is a harbinger for a future we can’t see yet. It marks a new era that will take us in completely new directions.
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When I first arrived in Poland in 1997, it seemed like the entire country was being rebuilt out of the Marriott hotel. Multinational companies looking to set up shop in the formerly communist country would rent temporary offices at the Regus Center there to get operations rolling. Later, they would move into more conventional space.
It was a good model that provided a useful service, but I was surprised to see that 20 years later that same model, in the form of a company called WeWork was being given a $47 billion valuation for an upcoming IPO. I was somewhat less surprised to see that valuation crash and burn almost as soon as the prospectus came out.
This is becoming a common tale of woe. Theranos, once the darling of Silicon Valley, was exposed as a fraud. Uber, the poster child for the sharing economy, saw its stock price collapse after it once again posting massive losses. It’s time to face facts. These are not isolated incidents but indicative how Silicon Valley investors misjudge the physical economy.
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