World Building
Story telling, new riches, and messy management
👋 On time for your weekend: a round-up of this week's 27 remarkable stories at the intersection of #technology, #business, #design, and #culture.
📚 Reading
World Building:
If you can create a world that’s more clear and compelling than the complex, ambiguous real world, then people will be attracted to that story. And when you invite those people into your world and give them purpose inside your world, and they accept that purpose, then they won’t ever leave. That’s how you get everyone pushing on your system problem all at the same time, without you having to be everywhere all at once.
👩🎤 Storytelling as a competitive advantage—Alex Danco
How People Get Rich Now:
Part of the reason it's getting easier to start a startup is social .. If you start one now, your parents won't freak out the way they would have a generation ago, and knowledge about how to do it is much more widespread. But the main reason it's easier to start a startup now is that it's cheaper. Technology has driven down the cost of both building products and acquiring customers.
😎 “Your parents won't freak out ”—Paul Graham
Think Biologically: Messy Management for a Complex World
Culture is an emergent outcome of the behaviors and interactions of employees rather than what leaders and managers declare it to be. Executives are able to influence culture only indirectly by setting an example, providing incentives, and selecting and amplifying the right behaviors. Unlike factory production, which can be engineered and scaled up or down through hierarchical directives, culture cannot be directly controlled by managers.
🤓 Culture is not an engineering problem—BCG Henderson
🎧 Listening
Around Europe:
Get out of the way! They need to get out of the way! Every area of European economic life is overregulated. The people in tech think it's worse than it is; the hostility they sense they somewhat overrate. But a lot of it is nonetheless real and Europe with regard to tech is a massive public relations problem; the European Union in particular. European governments should embrace tech with open arms, and they are very far from doing that.
Tyler Cowen—European Straits
The Uneasy Amazon Coalition:
And that's really what's at stake here. You have this new kind of work—warehouse work, fulfillment work—at this enormuous scale that Amazon created. What is that work going to be like? Just how physically, relentlessy demanding is it going to be? How much are you going to be under the constant thumb of really high performance quotas and on top of that really high surveillance of your performance.
Alec MacGillis—Big Technology Podcast
Against The Tide: Embedding Engagement Into Banking
[I]f your banking app can only provide the ability to check your balance and payments, send money to someone, it’s unlikely that you will be able to build a very strong long-term relationship. And that’s a commoditized product experience. You can make it slightly more seamless, but at the end of the day that’s not what’s going to differentiate you from the competition. The way you differentiate yourself .. is by giving an experience that is much broader.
Neri Tollardo—Structural Shifts
👷🏻♀️👷🏻♂️Our Work
How to reinvent your organization for the Passion Economy to not only thrive in this economy but help grow it too?—Chief Innovation Officer Summit
📬 Suggestions?
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