Innovations usually begin life with an attempt to solve a specific problem, but once they get into circulation, they end up triggering other changes that would have been extremely difficult to predict … An innovation, or cluster of innovations, in one field ends up triggering changes that seem to belong to a different domain altogether.
A politician thinks of the next election; a statesman of the next generation. A politician looks for the success of his party; a statesman for that of his country. The statesman wishes to steer, while the politician is satisfied to drift.
– James Freeman Clarke
I’ve recently boiled down the main risks in investing to two: the risk of losing money and the risk of missing opportunity. It’s possible to largely eliminate either one, but not both. In an ideal world, investors would balance these two concerns.
The other way to grab the high ground…is to exploit a wave of change. Such waves of change are are largely exogenous–they are beyond the control of any one organization. No one person organization creates these changes…Important waves of change are like an earthquake, creating new high ground and leveling what had been high ground. Such changes can upset the existing structures of competitive positions, erasing old advantages and enabling new ones…They can enable wholly new strategies.
There are two categories of high-quality people: there is the ammunition, and then there are the barrels. You can add all the ammunition you want, but if you have only five barrels in your company, you can literally do only five things simultaneously. If you add one more barrel, you can now do six things simultaneously…Finding those barrels that you can shoot through — someone who can take an idea from conception to live and it’s almost perfect — are incredibly difficult to find…Whenever you find a barrel, you should hire them instantly, regardless of whether you have money for them or whether you have a role for them.
Introducing an invention is a time fraught with combating stupidity and jealousy, inertia and venom, furtive resistance and an open conflict of interests, an appalling time spent battling with people, a martyrdom to be overcome, even if the invention is a success.
Management is tasked with moving an army from point to point, while leadership moves an army to where it never thought possible.
Every company faces a Malthusian process: the better it is at solving problems it’s good at, the more its fate is determined by the problems it’s bad at.
Technological progress requires above all tolerance toward the unfamiliar and the eccentric.