WEBVTT - Being Geeky Is Good for Getting Things Done

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<v Speaker 1>You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and

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<v Speaker 1>Tim Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.

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<v Speaker 2>There's a lot of innovative technology going on in this world,

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<v Speaker 2>and we have a couple of headlines. Semaphore reported the

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<v Speaker 2>US and China likely agreeing to set up a formalized

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<v Speaker 2>channel for talks on artificial intelligence.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, we also learned that YouTube is going to soon

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<v Speaker 3>require video makers to disclose whether they've uploaded manipulated or

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<v Speaker 3>synthetic content that looks realistic just think generative AI. So

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<v Speaker 3>they got to disclose that.

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<v Speaker 2>John mentioned Nvidia up for a tenth consecutive session, longest

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<v Speaker 2>streak of advances since record setting dash back in December

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<v Speaker 2>twenty sixteen, and Video, the world's most valuable chip maker,

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<v Speaker 2>announcing updates to its AI processors. So we want to

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<v Speaker 2>talk AI. We want to talk innovation, kind of talk

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<v Speaker 2>the next big thing.

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<v Speaker 3>Yeah, we got a great guest to do that. Andrew

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<v Speaker 3>McAfee as principal Research scientist at mit IS. He's out

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<v Speaker 3>there of a new book, The Geek Way, The Radical

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<v Speaker 3>mindset that drives Extraordinary results. He's also the visiting a

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<v Speaker 3>visiting Fellow, the Visiting fellow, the only one Tech and

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<v Speaker 3>Society at Google, where he's working with Google and research

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<v Speaker 3>related to the societal impacts of genitive AI. Andrew joins

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<v Speaker 3>us on Zoom this afternoon slash evening from Lisbon, Portugal. Andrew,

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<v Speaker 3>how are you.

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<v Speaker 4>I'm well, Thanks for having me.

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<v Speaker 3>Hey, well, thanks so much for joining us. The book

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<v Speaker 3>is called The Geek Way. What is the Geek Way?

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<v Speaker 4>The geek Way is an upgrade to the company. It's

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<v Speaker 4>a better set of philosophies and practices for running this

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<v Speaker 4>thing we call a company. And I decided to write

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<v Speaker 4>the book because I kept on seeing in industry after

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<v Speaker 4>industry the disruptors were beating the incumbents at their own game.

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<v Speaker 4>And I thought that was a really important phenomenon and

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<v Speaker 4>I wanted to understand it, and it turned into this book.

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<v Speaker 2>Hey, listen, we use the word geek like you're such

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<v Speaker 2>a geek. Oh, I'm being so geeky, you know, like

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<v Speaker 2>we kind of toss it around. But what exactly do

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<v Speaker 2>you mean?

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<v Speaker 1>I know, you've got four norms to.

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<v Speaker 2>Talk about the geek Way. I mean, is that how

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<v Speaker 2>you define it?

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<v Speaker 4>No? And this is a really important question because when

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<v Speaker 4>I was a kid geek was an insult, and it

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<v Speaker 4>was usually meant somebody who was way too into computers.

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<v Speaker 4>So I was guilty of that. And the thing that

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<v Speaker 4>makes me happy is that the definition has broadened out

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<v Speaker 4>and I don't think it's an insult anymore. A geek

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<v Speaker 4>is somebody with two characteristics. They get obsessed with a

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<v Speaker 4>really hard problem. They're tenacious, they can't let it go.

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<v Speaker 4>And if their solutions are unconventional or outside the mainstream,

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<v Speaker 4>they don't care. So my shorthand phrase for a geek

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<v Speaker 4>these days is any kind of obsessive maverick. And the

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<v Speaker 4>geeks that I wrote the book about are the geeks

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<v Speaker 4>that got obsessed with this really hard problem of how

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<v Speaker 4>do you run and keep succeeding with a company in

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<v Speaker 4>today's really uncertain, turbulent environment.

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<v Speaker 1>So elon musk A geek.

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<v Speaker 4>Geek, big geek, not perfect, not by any stretch, but

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<v Speaker 4>adheres deeply to a couple of these norms that I

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<v Speaker 4>talk about in the geek way.

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<v Speaker 1>Well, let's get to those norms. There's four of them.

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<v Speaker 2>Speed, ownership, science, and openness. Speed. You're talking about not

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<v Speaker 2>doing necessarily something fast, but you do something, create it

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<v Speaker 2>in a meaningful way, and then you get useful feedback

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<v Speaker 2>on it. I feel like it's every time I get like, hey,

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<v Speaker 2>an iOS update or something i I'm helping with that speeds.

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<v Speaker 4>That's exactly right. And of all the norms, Elon and

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<v Speaker 4>his companies epitomize speed the most. For me, Tesla is

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<v Speaker 4>willing to blow up rockets. Now, no people are on

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<v Speaker 4>those rockets, and they don't have any loss of life yet,

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<v Speaker 4>but they will iterate and get feedback and learn from

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<v Speaker 4>reality and learn from physics and blow things up. And

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<v Speaker 4>their results really speak for themselves. And if you look

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<v Speaker 4>at Tesla and it's market value and its ability to

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<v Speaker 4>build affordable electric cars profitably, they are clearly disrupting the

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<v Speaker 4>entire incumbent automotive industry and taking it into a different chapter.

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<v Speaker 3>What about Tim Cook? Is Tim Cook a geek?

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<v Speaker 4>Tim Cook is a geek. Apple is a very secretive company,

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<v Speaker 4>and in some ways that are a little hard to penetrate.

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<v Speaker 4>But one thing that I learned about Apple, in addition

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<v Speaker 4>to being very fond of this iteration of approach, they

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<v Speaker 4>also followed the norm, the great geek norm of science.

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<v Speaker 4>And what I mean by that is not do a

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<v Speaker 4>bunch of fancy statistical ab tests or anything, but settle

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<v Speaker 4>your arguments based on evidence. And there's a wonderful story

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<v Speaker 4>about that portrait mode on the iPhone and the fact

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<v Speaker 4>that the background is blurry and you can control the

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<v Speaker 4>blur when you're setting up the photo. There is a

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<v Speaker 4>debated Apple and they're rolling out that feature about whether

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<v Speaker 4>we should have the ability to control the blur in

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<v Speaker 4>advance or only see the effects after we take the picture.

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<v Speaker 4>Someone in a big meeting did a demo of the

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<v Speaker 4>feature where you can preview the blur, and that's settled

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<v Speaker 4>the argument. That's what science is. It's an evidence based argument.

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<v Speaker 4>The geeks love to argue and they love evidence, right.

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<v Speaker 1>I love that one.

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<v Speaker 2>You write about a lot in the book, which is

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<v Speaker 2>really interesting. The other thing I like is openness, which

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<v Speaker 2>you know you've got to be able to share, be

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<v Speaker 2>open to Well, wait a minute, maybe we should do

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<v Speaker 2>something a little bit differently, or and maybe we have

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<v Speaker 2>to change. It's so easy to be defensive with, you know,

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<v Speaker 2>with anything you do.

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<v Speaker 1>Tackle us a little bit more about this.

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<v Speaker 4>Yeah, and maybe I'm wrong, and maybe we need to pivot,

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<v Speaker 4>and maybe this thing that I've invested a ton in

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<v Speaker 4>and this thing that I'm hanging my reputation on is

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<v Speaker 4>not the right answering we need to change. So for me,

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<v Speaker 4>openness is just about exactly the opposite of defensiveness, of

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<v Speaker 4>clinging to what you have and never letting it go.

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<v Speaker 4>And that defensiveness is very clearly tied to an attitude

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<v Speaker 4>inside a company of winning all the time, of just winning,

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<v Speaker 4>winning the argument, winning the day, winning whatever. I don't

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<v Speaker 4>think it's a coincidence that Jack Welch's autobiography was called

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<v Speaker 4>winning and walking away from that. And it's not that

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<v Speaker 4>the Geeks love losing. These are incredibly tough competitors, but

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<v Speaker 4>they realize that if you're going to win over the

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<v Speaker 4>long haul, you have to take risks. You have to fail.

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<v Speaker 4>Sometimes you have to not punish people when they are failing.

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<v Speaker 4>And I think it's amazing that Jeff Bezos, in one

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<v Speaker 4>of his shareholder letters a few years ago, said, look,

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<v Speaker 4>if we are not incubating multi billion dollars inside Amazon

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<v Speaker 4>right now, we are not innovating at the right scale.

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<v Speaker 4>We are not taking enough risks. Now it looks like

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<v Speaker 4>a Lexta was one of those multi billion dollar failures.

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<v Speaker 4>But the culture at Amazon is one that that not

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<v Speaker 4>only tolerates that, but in any cases celebrates it.

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<v Speaker 3>One of those maybe that I don't know if we

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<v Speaker 3>can consider it a failure at this point, but one

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<v Speaker 3>of those that wasn't a failure was AWS. And the

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<v Speaker 3>guy who you know was charged and tasked with building

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<v Speaker 3>that out is none other than Andy Jassey, who's now

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<v Speaker 3>the CEO of Amazon. Okay, so Andrew, tell us about

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<v Speaker 3>some folks who maybe aren't geeks that you've come across

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<v Speaker 3>in your research, who are high profile and we've heard of.

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<v Speaker 4>I mean, you can look at the unbelievable ly short

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<v Speaker 4>lifespan of Quibi, which was this short vio streaming quick launched.

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<v Speaker 1>We all watched it from from our homes during the pandemic.

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<v Speaker 1>But go ahead, no, we didn't. That's why.

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<v Speaker 2>That's why it is.

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<v Speaker 4>We didn't watch you tube and hit top, but not

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<v Speaker 4>Quibi very much. But think about that. Jeffrey Katzenberg, who's

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<v Speaker 4>the founder of it, is an actual Hollywood vision area,

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<v Speaker 4>a huge string of tape measure home runs in that industry.

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<v Speaker 4>He drafted a recruited Meg Whitman to be the CEO

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<v Speaker 4>of Quibi. They raised coming on two billion dollars to

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<v Speaker 4>execute Katzenberg's vision of short form entertainment. Now, they didn't

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<v Speaker 4>do geeky things. They didn't listen to a lot of evidence,

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<v Speaker 4>they weren't very open to changes in direction. They didn't

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<v Speaker 4>build a beta of their product. They just realized this

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<v Speaker 4>full vision and released it out there into the world.

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<v Speaker 4>And it lasted as a live streaming platform less than

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<v Speaker 4>two hundred days before they announced the shutdown of it.

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<v Speaker 4>It was just this really old fashioned approach where you're

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<v Speaker 4>just going to blindly follow the vision of the leader,

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<v Speaker 4>com hell or high Water. And I contrast that with Netflix,

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<v Speaker 4>which is funded by this complete outsider to the entertainment

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<v Speaker 4>industry and is now disrupting that industry even as we speak.

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<v Speaker 1>Fascinating.

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<v Speaker 2>Is there so thought in terms of AI? We're all

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<v Speaker 2>like agg it feels like over artificial intelligence.

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<v Speaker 1>Yeah, my John Tucker's looking at me. Yeah, guy, thank you.

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<v Speaker 2>But how do you think about it?

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<v Speaker 1>Especially?

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<v Speaker 2>Is there a geek to follow when it comes to

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<v Speaker 2>AI that you think is going to be on it.

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<v Speaker 4>Well, I think first of all, that this period that

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<v Speaker 4>we're living through of unreal science fiction progress with AI,

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<v Speaker 4>and in particular this latest chapter of generative AI, these

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<v Speaker 4>are some of the most powerful tools we humans have

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<v Speaker 4>ever invented to help us accomplish our goals. We're living

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<v Speaker 4>through an astonishing ceriad of innovation. Now, what kinds of

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<v Speaker 4>companies are going to be successful at harnessing that technology.

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<v Speaker 4>I think they're geek companies. This technology is so new

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<v Speaker 4>it's deeply weird. The future is very uncertain. I think

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<v Speaker 4>maybe the only way, but certainly the best way that

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<v Speaker 4>you're going to get smart about it and learn how

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<v Speaker 4>to use AI and generative AI is by following this

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<v Speaker 4>geeky approach of taking a little risk, trying something, getting feedback, iterating,

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<v Speaker 4>moving into the future. That way, I'll be astonished if

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<v Speaker 4>AI helps the people still following the industrial era playbook

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<v Speaker 4>come back against the geeks. I do not predict.

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<v Speaker 2>I'm so dying to ask you about metaverse, but we've

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<v Speaker 2>run out of time. You're gonna have to come back.

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<v Speaker 2>This was fascinating. Andrew McAfee, Principal Research signists at MIT.

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<v Speaker 2>His book is called The Geek Way, The radical mindset

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<v Speaker 2>that drives extraordinary, extraordinary results, extraordinary works, extraordinary too, really

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<v Speaker 2>fascinating right in terms of how you look at things.

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<v Speaker 3>The Geek Way