Trust Beats Control and Open Beats Closed - Salim Ismail

The Great Resignation was big. Millions of people around the world quit their jobs rather than returning to the status quo of their working lives before the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting global lockdown. The pandemic only accelerated trends that had been building for most of the century. Over the last four decades, the half-life of learned skills has dropped from 30 years to fewer than four, in large part because of the accelerating pace of change driven by the tech revolution. According to noted business visionary John Seely, this trend will continue to accelerate in the years ahead. While employees were forced to work at home, the reason they could work at home was thanks to technological breakthroughs like Zoom, smartphones, ultra-high-speed broadband, and more.

small, independent and interdisciplinary teams are critical to future organizations, especially at the edges.

According to entrepreneur Chris Dixon, the most important change for entrepreneurs versus a decade ago is the ratio of reach to capital. Today, the reach of a startup is 100x larger, while the capital needed is one tenth that of a decade ago — a thousandfold improvement in just ten years.