Tim O’Reilly: “With crypto and Web3 more generally, there is a similar kind of real-world bet that blockchain technology will reshape the plumbing of the financial industry. If it succeeds, the winners will eventually be rewarded with enormous profits, justifying the price that has been paid. Crypto might be a bubble, a flash in the pan that will enrich some speculators while impoverishing others. But it might also be a fundamental innovation that will lead to greater prosperity for all of society. And to many, that’s a bet worth placing.”
strategy+business recommends “Open Strategy”: “Traditionally, a small set of executives develop strategy behind closed doors, then broadcast it to the organization. For leaders to invite others to contribute is often seen as a sign of weakness, diminishing the leaders’ stature, authority, and control. However, the reality is that leaders often find it difficult to develop imaginative ideas on their own, shackled as they are by their conventional wisdom and groupthink. Encouraging their employees to sign up for a newly developed strategy is harder still, considering that they haven’t been given a say in how the strategy should be implemented. It’s therefore no surprise that between 50% and 90% of strategies fail (including well-known examples at giant companies such as Nokia, GE, and Daimler). The authors boldly argue that a lack of openness is a bigger obstacle to success than the wrong strategic framework, a lack of intelligence, or poor consultants. Open strategy is more than a set of tactics or tweaks to an existing strategy. It requires leaders to believe that strategy is likely to be more distinctive and actionable if more people are involved. Open leaders show vulnerability by admitting what they don’t know. They respond to unfamiliar ideas with a “yes, and” mindset: “yes, this is a great idea, and to make it work in our company, we need to do X.”
David Perell: “Whether you’re writing essays or solving physics proofs, the process of thinking is the same. Putting ideas onto paper deepens your thought process and forces you to concretely express what you’re thinking. The more you get ideas onto paper, the less effort your brain has to devote to memory. Knowing that the pieces you’ve already solved are waiting on the page for you allows you to move into new intellectual territory and explore the depths of an idea.”
