Robert Sutton: “Culture is essentially the expectations about behavior in an organization that people hold for themselves and hold others responsible for. And let’s just talk about two of the key impediments that cause bad friction in organizations. One is “addition sickness.” This is the notion that we as human beings are wired to solve problems by making things more and more complex. A friend of mine, Michael Dearing, now a venture capitalist and senior executive at quite a few companies, says that in cultures where people reduce bad friction, people think and act like editors in chief. Good editors are constantly trying to make messages concise and clear, and also make actions as clear as possible. And so that’s one aspect of cultural behavioral standards. Another element is unnecessary friction, in coordination and collaboration. In large, complex organizations, there are lots of silos and therefore lots of handoffs between different teams and departments. Handoffs are important. Dysfunctional conflict arises when people in those different teams or departments see each other as enemies. It then becomes really difficult for them to collaborate. It’s a cultural behavioral trap that leaders need to watch out for.”
Carlota Perez: “AI, as a technology, will blend with and build on the other defining innovations of the ICT revolution. We will need to deploy all the tools that the state has at its disposal to shape the revolution by making it profitable for innovators to do right for the economy, society, and the environment. AI – along with robotics, the IoT, quantum computing, CRISPR gene editing, and all the other technologies made possible by powerful microelectronics and the internet – will indeed play a major role in shaping the future. But if AI’s development unfolds in a system where financial markets remain unregulated and decoupled from the real economy, it is unlikely to move us in a more environmentally, socially, or politically sustainable direction. Changing this broader political-economy context has become the most urgent task of our time.”
Rania Succar: “We know that 50 percent of small businesses fail in the first five years. The number one reason they fail is they can’t get enough customers or grow their existing customers. Marketing is hard for an enterprise. It’s especially hard for a small business, and it’s only gotten harder. It’s gotten harder because consumers are across multiple platforms these days, so you have to catch them in various different places, and that’s changing all the time. It’s challenging because businesses are increasingly using multiple apps to run their business, so their own customer data is dispersed and fragmented. So, I love the space we’re working in across Mailchimp because it’s a really important customer problem to solve, and it’s a complicated customer problem to solve. It’s not just about getting the right emails out — it’s about deeply understanding their prospects and their existing customers and helping them get the right message at the right time to the right audience in order to deliver those growth outcomes. So, it’s much more than just email.”
WSJ: “Grown-up builders, often rediscovering Lego after what aficionados refer to as the “dark age”—the void separating childhood fandom and its resumption as an adult—are increasingly helping cement the Danish company’s status as the world’s biggest toy maker by sales…Lego has doubled the size of its range targeting people over the age of 18 since it launched in 2020, and has made a series of ads aimed at older builders with the slogan “Adults Welcome.” The best part from the company’s perspective? Adults will pay grown-up prices that kids could only dream of. Think $850 Millennium Falcons and $680 Titanics.”
Michael Munger writes about the need to “look with two eyes” (Is): information and incentives.: “Commercial society performs better than politics because commerce allows the operation of the price mechanism, which generates information politics cannot match using voting. But the other “I,” incentives, is ultimately even more important. It comes as a surprise to many people that commercial institutions give people reasons to take the needs and wants of other people into account. Politics, by contrast, makes people selfish. It’s an inferior system for organizing anything other than elections.”
