Today, our focus is on timing. How much of a success or failure is because of timing? To answer that question, I welcome Paul Orlando back to the show. Paul is an expert in the world of startups, having built and operated startup accelerators around the world. He teaches at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
He is the author of a fascinating new book, Why Now? How Good Timing Makes Great Products. Paul and this conversation will make you think differently about the role of timing in decision-making. You will understand why you never want to be “ahead of your time”, you want to be at the right time.
That is driven home by an example that Paul shares at the outset and something that I didn't know about. The first video phone was launched back in 1964. And the reason why it didn't take off is because of timing.
This is a fabulous conversation in which Paul shares the myth of first-mover advantage, serendipity, his timing drivers, problem-finding versus problem-solving, AI and timing, and so much more.
Show notes:
Why Now – How Good Timing Makes Great Products
Paul’s previous episode on the podcast
YouTube version of the episode
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We are changing our name. Why?
This tongue-in-cheek Inbetweenisode explains
Today, I am delighted to welcome Alex Edmans to the show. You may have heard of him or you may have come across him. He is a Professor of Finance at London Business School. He was voted professor of the year by Poets and Quants. He is also a prominent speaker and an author, including of his most recent and fabulous book, May Contain Lies - How Stories, Statistics and Studies Exploit Our Biases. He joined me to talk about the book.
The book is excellent because it emphasises a number of things crucial to good decision-making, including things like why a fact is not data, data is not evidence, and evidence is not proof. Alex shares his work on things like football results and their impact on stock market performance, biases, evaluating research, ESG investing, trade-offs, cognitive diversity, dissenting viewpoints, and much more related to decision-making.
Show notes:
May Contain Lies – How Stores, Statistics and Studies Exploit Our Biases
Alex on football results and stock market sentiment
McKinsey’s “Diversity Matters” results revisited by Jeremiah Green and John Hand
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Today I welcome fellow Canadian Michael Hartley to the show. Michael is the director of InterKnowlogy, mining and energy. And that is a firm that operates at the intersection of risk management, human factors and data science to enhance decision-making. This conversation covers a wide range of fascinating stuff, mostly about how decisions get made during complexity and crises, mostly from Michael's background in energy and mining. However, the insights are applicable to a huge number of other contexts. And we cover the importance of decision making and critical thinking, understanding when decisions get made in organizations, data quality and presenting information, managing crises, AI and much more.
Show Notes:
Books and Papers
- "Thinking in Systems: A Primer" by Donella H. Meadows
- "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- "The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization" by Peter M. Senge
Concepts and Tools
- Goodhart's Law
- Cynefin Framework by Dave Snowden
- Scenario Planning
Additional Resources
- Deepwater Horizon Incident
- Shell's Scenario Planning
- Resilience Engineering
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