From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
My mother Bess taught me very early on to take risks and just go for it. I don't like to waste people's time, and I don't like my time wasted because time is the only thing you can't get back.
Transformation is about understanding how the market is evolving and positioning your organization for the future that's unfolding. It's about ensuring that you're there when that future arrives.
If somebody told me the US stock market returned 12% per annum over the last 50 years, I would simply ask them what the returns were over the last 150 years, 250 years, 10 years and so on. I could make up any return I want just by picking the appropriate time period.
At Axiom we've raised $64 million—we're a small startup—and we recently won the Putnam competition. We scored 90 out of 120, which would have placed us above all ~4,000 human contestants last year and at the level of a Putnam Fellow, meaning top five in the world. If you tried to achieve that purely through informal methods—where hallucination is a persistent risk—getting to the same level of consistent correctness would likely require a lot more resources.
The most successful teams are the ones who present with authenticity and passion. You could have the next cancer cure, but unless your audience believes in you, they won't invest in you.
What was broken in journalism was not a lack of demand for good stories nor a lack of journalists or the format of stories and distribution – the thing that was broken was the business model.
In the tech sphere, when you acquire a company, you're seldom buying the present product. Instead, you're investing in their future innovations. This means retaining talent is paramount.
What is the value of asking the right question to prompt the right answer? It would be difficult to find a sector that design and/or design thinking cannot impact.
From a global point of view, we are currently in the middle of a technical revolution similar to what our grandparents experienced when everybody switched their horse carts for cars. The same is happening now and it is a phase of transition for many businesses.
Unlike real money, they are decentralised and transactions are free; no bank in the middle taking their slice and nothing central to fail.
If you're simply trained in accounting or marketing, you'll never have what I call a kind of epiphany. A fantastic business stumbles onto something psychological which just gives it a fantastic edge.
On one hand, competitive high-pressure jobs lead executives into many situations that can induce worry and fear (anxiety), hopelessness and despair (depression), and urgency (stress). On the other hand, some people are drawn to high pressure jobs by their adventurous personalities, their ability to tolerate risk, and their motivation for achievement.