A compilation of recent, high-quality business insights from our businesses that brings together some of the best ideas and stories on Vision and Ideas, Strategy Execution, Top Leadership Effectiveness, and Talent and Succession.
Jeff Bezos on Failure and Scale The most interesting part of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ 2018 letter to shareholders is his section on product failures. In one passage, he compares Amazon’s Fire phone (a spectacular flop) and its voice-driven Echo speaker, which were both developed around the same time: As a company grows, everything needs […] Read More »
Facebook’s Next Big Bet When G100 hosted members at Facebook headquarters earlier this year, David Marcus, who leads Facebook’s unspecified blockchain business, offered the clearest explanation to date on what the technology means for business. His new division, tucked away in a restricted office at Facebook, is expected to launch a digital currency this year […] Read More »
G100 at Facebook Facebook’s battle against fake news is getting personal. A recent op-ed by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explains how his billion-dollar advertising business works with data and why tolerating clickbait or selling user information is counterproductive to operations. An excerpt: I believe the most important principles around data are transparency, choice and control. […] Read More »
Inside the Global Information War Why are tech leaders, lawmakers, and digital combatants, including “professional state-employed cyberwarriors and seasoned amateur guerillas,” fighting different digital wars? On Ribbonfarm, Renée DiResta offers a fascinating look at evolving misinformation conflicts and the ineffectiveness of what she terms the “digital Maginot Line.” A particularly salient passage on engagement asymmetry […] Read More »
Why Innovation Dies at Big Companies Do incumbents underestimate the velocity of change for disruptive technologies and competitive upstarts within and outside their industry, as Clay Christensen’s argument goes? Or, as economists Rebecca Henderson and Kim Clark posit, does a failure to reinvent organizational structure in legacy companies doom good ideas? Tim Harford parses examples […] Read More »
The Most Expensive Cyberattack in History In a matter of hours on June 27, 2017, the NotPeyta cyberattack shut down the Ukrainian government and many major utilities and paralyzed operations at global companies including Mondelez, Merck, and Maersk. The sum total of damages is estimated to be over $10 billion, making NotPetya the most costly […] Read More »
Why Rebels Can Be Your Best Employees For companies pursuing innovation, managing the tension between experimentation and rigor has traditionally proved tricky. Leaders who do this best, like Michelin-starred chef Massimo Bottura, identify and embrace “rebel talent” better than others, explains behavioral scientist and Harvard Business School professor Francesca Gino. Gino discusses her research on […] Read More »
From Store to Door, With or Without Humans Remember Amazon’s drone delivery promise? It’s reality in China, where JD.com – the country’s second largest e-commerce outlet, backed by Tencent, Walmart, and Google – has been using drones to deliver goods since 2017. The New Yorker goes on the ground in Zhangwei to explore how drone […] Read More »
An AI Pulse Check At our G100 Spring Meeting earlier this month, entrepreneur Barney Pell explained the importance of incrementality in integrating machine learning processes in the workplace. Andreessen Horowitz partner Benedict Evans expands on where machine learning succeeds today, offering a starting point for companies deciding what questions to ask of existing data: We’re […] Read More »
What Will Fuel the IoT Revolution? A proliferation of smart sensors – about 50 billion of them – will be installed by 2023, transforming nearly everything into a computing device. Data from these sensors, coupled with AI and predictive analytics, will deliver higher efficiencies with better prediction, says C3 IoT CEO Tom Siebel. In a […] Read More »
