There’s a fine line between healthy corporate culture and toxic corporate propaganda.

Elite MBAs have been dysfunctional for a long time. Their dysfunction is spilling over now with Harvard’s attack against Francesca Gino.

This week, as bitcoin hit an all time high of $66,000, people started selling it on Craigslist.

No writer impacted my entrepreneur life more than James Baldwin. Baldwin is the voice that encourages us to live in the power of our own truth - even if it’s scary or unpopular.

When a struggling company announces that it’s making a huge investment in AI, you should immediately think of North Korea - a struggling country that makes huge investments in nuclear weapons. In both cases, the technological investment is an expensive and elaborate decoy that masks stagnation and decay. It’s a sign that they’ve run out of ideas to fuel prosperity and growth.

Innovation labs are like a 68 year old man who buys a customized Ferrari: It’s supposed to signal virility and prowess, but usually it’s a signal that his kids haven’t spoken to him in 6 years. What is true for Italian sports cars is true for corporate innovation labs: The shiniest toys mask the darkest dysfunction. There’s a better way to innovate. I talk about it here.

Brewdog is a testament to Punk as a business strategy. It is the only company in UK history to increase sales by 90% for 6 consecutive years. It was so irreverent, provocative, and outlandish that it built a movement rather than just a hoppy beer. We explore more in this article.

Life is short. So…
Build Epic Shit
Speak Truth to Power
Be The Truest Version of Yourself
Seek Solidarity

December is the season of holiday parties and performance reviews. We offer some perspective about whether to stay or go.

In June, 2007, I had my first F U Pay Me innovation meeting. It showed me that every intrapreneur needs to be defend their ROI to an innovation-agnostic investor.

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mike Bloomberg all quit or got fired from banks before becoming entrepreneurs. The culture of banks spits out brilliant innovators and negates their investments into technology. AI is no different. Here’s how to fix banking culture.

Ethics almost never wins a fight against economics. But sometimes they are totally interdependent. I talk about it more in this week’s edition of the newsletter.

The mismatch that OPEN AI experienced as a disruptive tech juggernaut trapped in the body of a non-profit will morph into a new challenge at Microsoft: a disruptive tech startup trapped in the body of a huge, political, bureaucratic corporation.

From 2012-2019, Hubert Joly led Best Buy from the precipice of bankruptcy to a 3X increase in market capitalization, in one of the most remarkable turnarounds in corporate history. He did so through a doctrine of ‘human magic’ which depended on empowered, energized solidarity among Best Buy’s workforce. His doctrine is essential reading for anyone leading massive change in an emotionally messy company.

When CHAT GPT went public a year ago I predicted that it would be more of a threat to McKinsey, BCG, and Bain than to Google. Two disparate headlines this week indicate that this prediction is coming true.

When you really need help, you need an expert - not a thought leader. Experts are survivors - thought leaders are observers. In this article I show you how to spot the difference.

In 1977 the most notorious punk band on Earth, The Sex Pistols, was fired by EMI records and signed by a fledgling independent record label, Virgin, led by a struggling, young magazine publisher named Richard Branson.

Sir Richard Branson is now worth approximately $7 billion.

How Punk was the cornerstone of Richard Branson’s business empire.

In 2009 a team of Daimler executives visited Silicon Valley as part of a global innovation expedition to explore electric vehicles. The team visited Fisker, Think City, BYD, and a struggling Silicon Valley startup called Tesla.

Tesla’s eccentric CEO, Elon Musk, did something different from everyone else. When he came out to greet them, he asked if they wanted to test-drive an electric Smart car.

What happened next is a masterclass for anyone trying to innovate in the face of corporate resistance.

I’ve worked with C-Suite Leaders at Google, Bloomberg, Uber, and across the Fortune 500. But Ethan Berman, CEO of RiskMetrics, had the most enduring impact. In this article I reverse-engineer his strategy for disruptive growth.