A review of William MacAskill’s Doing Good Better No one donates money to try really hard to cure cancer, or deeply empathize with Siberian tigers. The goal is to eradicate cancer. The goal is to save Siberian tigers from extinction. And yet while philanthropy is oriented around specific outcomes, it’s often driven by emotion more than…
The Department of Defense (DOD) isn’t just the nation’s oldest federal agency. It’s also the nation’s largest employer. Between active-duty personnel, civilian employees, and the men and women who serve in the National Guard and Reserve forces, the DOD employs nearly three million people. Every year, thousands of these individuals complete their military service and…
In the venture capital industry, just picking winners is a losing strategy. The goal is to pick blockbusters, companies that can scale from a team of founders in a garage to a multi-billion-dollar IPO in less than a decade. History has shown that it’s primarily these outlying performers that create returns for venture investors, so…
A roadmap for navigating the transition from human-controlled cars to a better driverless future In the six-plus years that Google has been developing self-driving cars, its test fleet has achieved an impressive safety record: Nearly two million miles* of real-world autonomous driving, eleven minor accidents, only one minor injury, with none of the accidents caused by the self-driving…
To guide its efforts to increase global health, security, and overall standards of living over the next several decades, the United Nations is officially adopting 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) later this year. When people consider sustainability, particularly in the face of overall population growth, they usually focus on issues like healthcare, food production, education,…
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the ability to extract key information before your competitors do is a crucial advantage. As I’ve written elsewhere, search literacy is not enough to succeed in this world. You need network literacy too. And that means developing your aptitude for reading how information flows through different networks of alliance and…
Our world is getting more and more virtualized – but ultimately the Networked Age runs on power strips, cargo ships, and Uber trips. And over the next decade and a half, as 2.5 billion people in China, India, and other developing countries come online and join the global middle class, the global demand for energy…
When I read that my old friend Mark Pincus has returned to Zynga as CEO, it struck me as an important example of the unique role that a founder plays at a startup. This moment highlights the importance of founders, precisely because Zynga already had a capable and accomplished CEO. Don Mattrick is a seriously experienced and…
LinkedIn Partnering with Lean In, the Anita Borg Institute and Facebook to create new computer science and engineering Lean In Circles When you’re doing something challenging and risky, there’s strength in numbers. That’s why backcountry explorers use the buddy system. It’s also why successful start-ups are often the result of close-knit teams rather than a…
President Obama covered a lot of ground in his State of the Union Address. Childcare. Education. Tax codes. Terrorism. Cybersecurity. And the theme that ultimately unites all these different areas, no matter how unconnected they may seem sometimes, is something the president touched upon too: The world – and America right along with it —…
“The New Republic is frankly an experiment,” its editors wrote in its debut issue, which appeared a little over 100 years ago in November 1914. The experiment got off to a shaky start. The first issue sold just 875 copies. At the newsstand rate of ten cents a copy, net proceeds were $87.50. While circulation rose in…
Mutual benefit is the fundamental characteristic of an alliance in the workplace. Ideally, by working together, the employee transforms his career and the company transforms its business. When an employee evaluates what he or she stands to gain in this alliance, the cash and equity compensation the company offers should be one of the benefits.…
In his book Zero to One, my friend and former colleague Peter Thiel lays out an ingenious, provocative, and highly entertaining argument regarding the virtues of monopoly and the shortcomings of competition. He makes his case so deftly that I suspect it will soon attain the implacable majesty of conventional wisdom. That would be a shame.…
Last night President Obama explained the steps that the Administration will take to initiate long-needed reforms to our nation’s immigration policy. Essentially, around 4 – 5 million undocumented immigrants who meet certain criteria will be able to come out of the shadows and obtain relief from deportation for as long as three years. We are undoubtedly a…
Bitcoin is often characterized in the media as a volatile virtual commodity that can optimize speculation even more efficiently than gold, securitized subprime mortgages, or tulips. That’s not how I think about it. For me, Bitcoin is a transformative addition to Internet communication protocols that will create new networks of trust, fuel massive economic ecosystems,…