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Both Jobs and Gates reaped enormous benefit from studying the works of their contemporaries, extracting crucial insights, and applying those lessons to develop new products. And they are not alone. The history of computing is not a history of independent acts of brilliance. It is the story of probing innovators learning from one another, combining ideas from multiple sources, and introducing new products and technologies that evolve from those preceding them.
Decoding Greatness
Ron Friedman
Throughout all the festivities the next day at the White House surrounding the Phase One trade deal signing ceremony, the Chinese delegation acted as if there was no health crisis in their country that was in the process of spreading around the world; during their visit, the Chinese representatives didn’t say a word about the virus. Nothing. It was never brought up—by either side. It didn’t even occur to the US officials who were hosting the Chinese delegation to ask about the coronavirus. The Chinese officials left after a two-day visit marked by the trade deal signing and press conference, giving no warning about what they must have known at the time: that the emerging pandemic was much worse than publicly known—more contagious, more present in asymptomatic cases, and more out of control than they wanted to admit. Over the next ten days, Pottinger’s email inbox was flooded with messages from credible sources telling him the outbreak in China was far worse than the Chinese government was telling. He began to scour Chinese social media, picking up firsthand accounts of the outbreak in Wuhan as they appeared and then were quickly deleted by Chinese censors. Ai Fen, a senior doctor at Wuhan Central Hospital, posted about the virus on WeChat. Wuhan doctor Li Wenliang also shared information. Both were admonished by the Chinese authorities for releasing information not previously approved by the government. The cover-up was already under way. Any Chinese health officials who publicly warned that the virus was more dangerous than the authorities would admit were forced to apologize or arrested. On the evening of January 24, Pottinger went to Dimon Liu’s house for a Chinese New Year’s dinner celebration. It wasn’t a formal Bingo Club event, but it was the same crowd. (I was out of town that weekend and missed it.) The Chinese dissidents at the party pleaded with Pottinger to investigate further, insisting that the crisis in Wuhan was far worse than advertised. Pottinger came home from the party rattled and immediately started reaching out to doctors inside China who had been his sources when he covered the SARS outbreak in 2003 as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. That public health crisis had marked the global debut of—and the first known pandemic risk from—coronaviruses, a type of pathogen that until then had been little studied and only poorly understood.
Chaos Under Heaven
Josh Rogin
Data Combined with Anecdote to Tell the Whole Story Numerical data become more powerful when combined with real-life customer stories. The Dive Deep leadership principle states, “Leaders operate at all levels, stay connected to the details, audit frequently, and are skeptical when metrics and anecdotes differ. No task is beneath them.”
Working Backwards
Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
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