From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
The first trillionaires are going to be created through space exploration. Imagine the mineral wealth on planet Earth, and then realise that Earth is just a tiny blue dot in our whole galaxy… which is just one galaxy in a universe, which could be part of many universes. Everything we think is rare on Earth, is abundant in space.
For the iPad it's game over in terms of market-share… Apple has won! It's a preposterously cheap stock… The applications for the iPhone and the iPad are just growing every day. I think these things are going to be ubiquitous…
Most risk managers on Wall St, and practically all staff members in institutions like the Fed, IMF and elsewhere do not understand the statistical properties of risk. I think the notion that the time-series of market moves in large complex markets is not a normal distribution has largely sunk-in.
You don't have to choose a business that's going to drown you, be a treadmill, or suck you underneath. You can start slow, make a bit of money and then double down. You don't have to risk it all at the beginning. Start slow… make a bit of money… make a bit more… then you're playing with the house's money.
A crucial realization for me is that the management styles of the West and East are not mutually exclusive. In fact, blending the best elements of each can be highly effective. Western management, particularly in Silicon Valley, is often seen as a triumph of capitalism, primarily focused on maximizing shareholder value. Contrastingly, my experience with NTT revealed a different approach, one that prioritizes stakeholders, sometimes even more than shareholders.
The end of an X-Prize is the beginning of a new market, or a new market opportunity. We are nothing more than a distinct channel to that market.
When I ask people to note down their desired earnings for the next week or year, about 95% choose figures they deem 'realistic'. They won't even dare to jot down their dream figures, held back by their internal reservations.
Our number one instinct is survival, followed by reproduction. People started to realise that if they took care of themselves, they would live longer, have better sex and have healthier children. The mission of my family, which ended up being Lululemon, was for people to be able to live healthier, longer, and more fun lives.
There's a huge amount of corruption in some of these countries, but when you have traceability and transparency that's been pushed through consumer and shareholder pressure into global value-chains, it can act as an antidote to the corruption which may exist in the market.
Status hierarchies help us navigate choices which would otherwise be impossibly complex. It dramatically reduces the cognitive load we face in making decisions.
I used to say to all my people that yes- we can celebrate our successes, and we have to succeed, but the failures are what will sink the business or hold it back.
When you look at a business in trouble, the important thing is to understand where the trouble is coming from. Critically you need to know whether it's a restructuring or transformation. A restructuring is where you adjust structures to a reduced volume or revenue level, but in this case the business model is not broken. In transformations, you still restructure, but you are dealing with a potentially broken business model.