Cyrus Field is described as a “project entrepreneur” in my Openness to Creative Destruction book. In the op-ed linked-to below, I celebrate his achievement.
My book, mentioned above, is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
My book is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
In my Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism, I suggest that different innovative entrepreneurs have different motives. Some mainly want money for its own sake, some mainly want fame, some mainly want to win the competition. Then there are those who mainly want to bring their project into the world. These are the project entrepreneurs, who often sacrifice for their project, forgoing conspicuous consumption in order to “make a ding in the universe.” (The phrase is due to Steve Jobs.) In my book I give Walt Disney as one example, and Jeff Bezos as another. Was I wrong? Or has Bezos changed? Or is there some other way to account for what looks like Bezos’s conspicuous consumption, as described below?
(p. B4) The national housing market has cooled, but in Los Angeles the ultrarich are still shattering price records. An heiress to the Formula One racing empire sold her home for $119.75 million last July. In December, Lachlan Murdoch paid $150 million for a home in Bel Air.
The latest buyer at the top: Jeff Bezos, the Amazon chief and world’s richest person.
Setting a new high for a home sold in California, Mr. Bezos is paying $165 million for a Beverly Hills estate owned by David Geffen, the media mogul and co-founder of DreamWorks, according to two people familiar with the purchase.
That wasn’t all. In a separate transaction, Bezos Expeditions, which oversees The Washington Post and Mr. Bezos’ charitable foundation, is buying 120 undeveloped acres in Beverly Hills for $90 million, the two people said.
For the full story, see:
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 14, 2020, and has the title “Jeff Bezos Buying $165 Million Estate, a California Record.”)
My book is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
(p. A5) Facebook Inc.’s senior leadership is increasingly divided over how to address criticism of the company’s effect on U.S. politics, with board member and billionaire investor Peter Thiel serving as an influential voice advising CEO Mark Zuckerberg not to bow to public pressure, according to people familiar with the matter.
One flashpoint of late: political advertisements. Mr. Thiel has argued that Facebook should stick to its controversial decision, announced in September [2019], to continue accepting them and to not fact-check those from politicians, the people said.
. . .
Some of Mr. Thiel’s views are shared by others within Facebook, including on political ads, with many current and former executives advising Mr. Zuckerberg that the company shouldn’t be in the position of deciding what claims are accurate, people familiar with the matter said.
. . .
Mr. Zuckerberg has long valued Mr. Thiel’s advice. Some people close to both men described their current relationship as an alliance, based in part on their long history together.
Mr. Thiel, 52 years old, was the first outside investor in Facebook, and ultimately made more than $1 billion on his stake. Early on, Mr. Thiel advised Mr. Zuckerberg, now 35, to focus on growing the Facebook platform’s user base rather than on making money, contrarian advice at the time that laid the groundwork for Facebook’s riches today. Mr. Thiel and his funds have since sold off most of their Facebook shares.
. . .
Mr. Zuckerberg and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg have said repeatedly that they value ideological diversity on the board, although that view isn’t shared by all of the company’s workforce.
“Mark is friends with Peter Thiel and a lot of Republicans,” said a former Facebook employee who worked in its political group. “It’s a reality people aren’t willing to accept.”
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 17, 2019, and has the title “Peter Thiel at Center of Facebook’s Internal Divisions on Politics.” The last sentence quoted above appears in the online version, but not in the print version, of the article.)
(p. A15) The 2010s have been the best decade ever. The evidence is overwhelming. Start with the United Nations Development Report. Framed as a warning about inequality, it plays down the good news: “The gap in basic living standards is narrowing, with an unprecedented number of people in the world escaping poverty, hunger and disease.”
The World Bank reports that the world-wide rate of extreme poverty fell more than half, from 18.2% to 8.6%, between 2008 and 2018. Last year the World Data Lab calculated that for the first time, more than half the world’s population can be considered “middle class.”
. . .
Rich countries use less aluminum, nickel, copper, steel, stone, cement, sand, wood, paper, fertilizer, water, crop acreage and fossil fuel every year, as Andrew McAfee documents in “More From Less.” Consumption of 66 out of 72 resources tracked by the U.S. Geological Survey is now declining.
For the full commentary, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 16, 2019, and has the same title as the print version.)
The commentary is related to the author’s book:
Norberg, Johan. Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future. London, UK: Oneworld Publications, 2016.
The book by McAfee, mentioned in the commentary, is:
McAfee, Andrew. More from Less: The Surprising Story of How We Learned to Prosper Using Fewer Resources―and What Happens Next. New York: Scribner, 2019.
Oxford University Press (OUP) has created a list of 6 books they recommend on business innovation. If you follow the link below, you can download a free PDF of Chapter 9 (“Innovation Bound or Unbound by Culture and Institutions”) of my Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. Alas, I think the free download is only available through February 29, 2020. (Chapter 9 is not my favorite chapter, but free is free;)
My book is:
Diamond, Arthur M., Jr. Openness to Creative Destruction: Sustaining Innovative Dynamism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.
(p. B3) . . . , it makes sense that A.I. — which is about planning, perceiving and so on — would hit white-collar roles.
Still, workers needn’t panic. Carl Benedikt Frey, an economist at Oxford University who specializes in technology and employment, said A.I. was “more likely to complement people in those jobs rather than replacing them.” And Mr. Muro points out that “these workers are frequently the ones that companies have already invested in” and are likely to have been consulted about their futures.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated Nov. 22, 2019, and has the title “The Week in Tech: A.I.’s Threat to White-Collar Jobs.”)
(p. B3) LONDON — The European Union wants to make it easier to charge your cellphone and other devices.
This week, members of the European Parliament held a hearing on a measure to require smartphone makers to produce a common charger for all mobile and portable devices sold in the region, including tablets, e-readers and digital cameras.
The goal: no more frustration at borrowing a friend’s charger only to find it has a Lightning connector when you need a USB-C.
. . .
The European Commission is scheduled to publish a study in the coming weeks to deliberate the next legislative steps.
But device makers may eventually decide the issue before the legislators do. Each year, an increasing number of phones arrive on the market with another option: wireless charging.
For the full story, see:
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story was updated Jan. 19, 2020, and has the title “A Common Charger for All Phones? The E.U. Is on the Case.”)
The Odgers paper, mentioned in the passage quoted above, is:
(p. A9) Dr. Polak, . . . , found that poor people valued and cared for things they had bought. “You can’t donate people out of poverty,” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2007.
The trick was to figure out which tools were needed and how to make them at an affordable cost. For nearly four decades, Dr. Polak roamed the world’s poorest regions and quizzed farmers about their needs. “The small farmers I interviewed became my teachers,” he said in a video posted by one of the organizations he founded, iDE, formerly known as International Development Enterprises.
While visiting Somalia in the early 1980s, he noticed people lugging water and other items by hand or with awkward donkey carts. Working with local blacksmiths, he devised a better donkey cart, using parts from junked automobiles. From that point, he relied on market forces: Blacksmiths began making and selling the carts for the equivalent of about $450. Buyers of the carts could earn $200 a month for transporting goods, according to iDE.
. . .
Paul Polak (pronounced POLE-ack) . . .
. . .
He wrote or co-wrote two books drawing on his experiences, “The Business Solution to Poverty” (2013) and “Out of Poverty” (2008).
For the full obituary, see:
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date Oct. 25, 2019, and has the title “Paul Polak Built Better Tools for Farmers in Poor Countries.”)
The books authored, or co-authored, by Paul Polak, mentioned above, are:
Polak, Paul. Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008.
Polak, Paul, and Mal Warwick. The Business Solution to Poverty: Designing Products and Services for Three Billion New Customers. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2013.
(p. B1) SAN FRANCISCO — It has become common wisdom that too much time spent on smartphones and social media is responsible for a recent spike in anxiety, depression and other mental health problems, especially among teenagers.
But a growing number of academic researchers have produced studies that suggest the common wisdom is wrong.
The latest research, published on Friday [January 17, 2020] by two psychology professors, combs through about 40 studies that have examined the link between social media use and both depression and anxiety among adolescents. That link, according to the professors, is small and inconsistent.
“There doesn’t seem to be an evidence base that would explain the level of panic and consternation around these issues,” said Candice L. Odgers, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, and the lead author of the paper, which was published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.
For the full story, see:
(Note: bracketed date added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 17, 2020, and has the title “Panicking About Your Kids’ Phones? New Research Says Don’t.”)
The Odgers paper, mentioned in the passage quoted above, is:
(p. B4) It has been on a steep upward trajectory for years, and in 2019, it finally happened.
There were more than 500 scripted television series in the United States last year, a high. The estimated number: 532 comedies, dramas and limited series that were broadcast or streamed, according to the research department of the cable network FX, which tabulates and releases the figure every year.
It marked the first time the 500-show threshold had been crossed, representing a 7 percent increase over the number of scripted shows in 2018.
The 2019 total was 52 percent more than the 349 shows that existed in 2013, the year that streaming started to become a habit for many viewers, with the debut of “House of Cards” on Netflix. And it’s a jump of 153 percent over the 210 series available in 2009.
For the full story, see:
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Jan. 9, 2020, and has the title “Yellow or Blue? In Hong Kong, Businesses Choose Political Sides.”)
