The Art of The Impossible: An Exponential Mindset

Welcome to The Art of The Impossible, a weekly newsletter where I unearth five pieces of content which I hope will both inspire and embolden you.

PODCAST

The Rise of the Exponential Organization

This week's recommendation is the a16z podcast hosted by Steph Smith with guests Peter Diamandis and Salim Ismail - founders, futurists, and authors of books including Exponential Organizations and Exponential Organizations 2.0 which comes out in June.

In this fascinating conversation, Peter, Steph and Salim discuss how things have changed since they wrote the first book in 2014, why now is a great time for innovation, the impact of AI on entrepreneurship and why the big companies are still no longer safe from small-team, fast-moving startups.

QUOTE

INTERVIEW

50 Years of the Ethernet

Congratulations to Bob Metcalfe who has won the Turing Awards 2022 - ACM A.M. Turing Award Honors Bob Metcalfe for Invention, Standardization, and Commercialization of Ethernet. Bob is recognized for creating the foundational technology of the Internet which supports more than 5 billion users and enables much of modern life - read more here.

Also, watch Bob talk about the ethernet idea here and below, and read my interviews with Radia Perlman here and with Judy Estrin here to learn about their contributions.

You can also watch the 50th celebration at the Computer History Museum from last night here. On May 22, 1973, a young researcher at Xerox PARC named Bob Metcalfe sent a memo outlining his concept for connecting the research center’s computers. He called it Ethernet and teamed up with hardware wizard Dave Boggs to make it real. Fifty years later, Ethernet connects us all—to each other and to the global internet. We take for granted how much Ethernet and its offshoot Wi-Fi have transformed our world.

So, how exactly did Ethernet come to life? And how did an unorthodox standard for local connections triumph over competitors backed by IBM and other leading firms? Ethernet’s path was far from smooth, and it offers lessons for innovation and entrepreneurship today. In this Computer History Museum event, they explore the impact of Ethernet and look at what’s next as ever-higher bandwidths and multiplying connections unlock future opportunities. A wonderful watch.

BOOK

Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet by Marian Tupy and Gale Pooley 

More people produce more ideas, which lead to more inventions. People then test those inventions in the marketplace to separate the useful from the useless. At the end of that process of discovery, people are left with innovations that overcome shortages, spur economic growth, and raise standards of living.

But large populations are not enough to sustain superabundance―just think of the poverty in China and India before their respective economic reforms. To innovate, people must be allowed to think, speak, publish, associate, and disagree. They must be allowed to save, invest, trade, and profit. In a word, they must be free. (Source.)

“The decline of poverty and famine and disease and violence over the past few decades has been spectacular, as authors Tupy and Pooley demonstrate. There is every reason to think it can continue and our grandchildren will look back on today’s world with horror and pity. This book is a comprehensive, detailed, and devastating riposte to the perpetual pessimists who dominate modern discourse.”

—MATT RIDLEY, author of The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves and How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom

Buy the book here.

WATCH

My son had to do a presentation this week on a historical figure of significance and he chose Steve Jobs and during his research, he found this wonderful celebration of Steve which perfectly summarises the impact he had and continues to have.

For all his faults, he truly was remarkable and we should never forget that.

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Thank you for reading the newsletter and for listening to the podcast, and If you enjoy them, please do share with your network - my goal is to have these stories reach as many as possible so that others can be inspired too.

Until next time...

Danielle