Bold: How to Go Big, Create Wealth and Impact the World by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler was fantastic to read after Exponential Organizations and Abundance. If Exponential Organizations discussed the problems and Abundance discussed the solutions, Bold can be thought of as discussing the implementation!
The world’s biggest problems = biggest business opportunities.
Like the previous 2 books, Bold is incredibly optimistic about the future. The first section discusses the 6 ‘D’s of exponentials
- Digitalisation
- Deception
- Disruption
- Demonetisation
- Dematerialisation
- Democratisation
Anything that becomes digitised, e.g. biology, medicine, manufacturing can then leverage Moore’s law of exponentially increasing computational power.
The second chapter is about the democratisation of power, essentially how things that were once the forte of big governments are now attainable by companies and individuals. Where as once manufacturing plastics was a complicated process, only possible with bulk manufacture, the advent of 3D printing now offers affordable manufacture-on-demand services, anywhere in the world.
Whilst once space flight was only possible for organisations the size of NASA, now many much smaller organisations with just a handful of members/employees are putting rockets in to space whilst striving to win an X-Prize!
Section 2 then discusses mindset, opening strong with a discussion about basic income. Once everyone is paid enough so all their basic needs are met, intrinsic rewards that meet your emotional satisfactions become far more important than financial rewards.
Encouraging creative and passionate minds becomes a problem in itself.
Peter’s Laws™ The Creed of the Persistent and Passionate Mind
- If anything can go wrong, fix it! (To hell with Murphy!)
- When given a choice—take both!
- Multiple projects lead to multiple successes.
- Start at the top, then work your way up.
- Do it by the book . . . but be the author!
- When forced to compromise, ask for more.
- If you can’t win, change the rules.
- If you can’t change the rules, then ignore them.
- Perfection is not optional.
- When faced without a challenge—make one.
- No simply means begin one level higher.
- Don’t walk when you can run.
- When in doubt: THINK!
- Patience is a virtue, but persistence to the point of success is a blessing.
- The squeaky wheel gets replaced.
- The faster you move, the slower time passes, the longer you live.
- The best way to predict the future is to create it yourself!
- The ratio of something to nothing is infinite.
- You get what you incentivize.
- If you think it is impossible, then it is for you.
- An expert is someone who can tell you exactly how something can’t be done.
- The day before something is a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.
- If it was easy, it would have been done already.
- Without a target you’ll miss it every time.
- Fail early, fail often, fail forward!
- If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
- The world’s most precious resource is the persistent and passionate human mind.
- Bureaucracy is an obstacle to be conquered with persistence, confidence, and a bulldozer when necessary.
The 3rd and final section is about implementation using the crowd! i.e. the billions of people across the world looking for things to do! This was quite nice to read as it’s how I personally run my businesses and solve my problems.
By leveraging services like Upwork it’s possible to find affordable, talented people to solve problems all over the world. Other services like 99Designs or Tongal can be used to run competitions to source creative works.
If you genuinely have that one great idea, but are struggling to take it to the next level, crowdfunding can be an option, if you have the right pitch for the right audience. Whether it’s donation based, microlending, equity sales or even prepurchase, sites like Kiva, GlobalGiving and CrowdFunder can help people raise money.
This book is a must read for anyone, if you’re already leveraging the Internet to run your online business you are probably implementing a lot of these techniques and practices anyway so it’s good to be reassured by the inventor of Paypal that you’re doing the right thing! If you’re just starting out (and even if you’re an old hand) you will get great exposure to new ideas that can help you get moving.