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O'Reilly Radar tracks the technologies and people that will shape our world in the years to come. Each episode of O'Reilly Radar features an interview with an industry thought leader, with topics touching on everything from programming to data to experience design. We also take a step back from the breathless pace of the latest tech news to examine why new developments are important and what they might mean down the road.

O'Reilly Radar Podcast

Founders, operators, and builders sharing their takeaways.

Ivy League

Around the firm we use “software eats the world” as a guide for how technology will impact every industry and every person – from education to healthcare and government. As a16z marks its five-year anniversary, we turned to the fellow who came up with the thesis, Marc Andreessen, to explain how it’s rippling around the globe. And to break down all the implications for building companies and managing people we tapped a16z's cofounder Ben Horowitz. With both “a” and “z” in the room, this segment takes stock of the technology industry and startup ecosystem – from entrepreneurs to investors, and where it’s all headed next.  Part one of two.

a16z Podcast: Ben and Marc Explain (Practically) Everything – Part 1

The five-year anniversary segment with a16z founders Ben Horowitz and Marc Andreessen picks up with a discussion of Clayton Christensen's theories around disruption. Why Christensen's thinking is very much on the mark today, and how his theories help guide the firm in making decisions about what NOT to invest in. Ben offers one of the things he wished he had known as a young CEO, and Marc describes a trait that every great entrepreneur possesses. Part two of two.

a16z Podcast: Ben and Marc Explain (Practically) Everything – Part 2

Following from my post a few days ago on strategies for manifesting creativity, I remembered this excellent seminar from the early nineties with John Cleese on the very same subject. It’s total gold dust from writers and filmmakers and you can listen to it above.

The 5 factors that you can arrange to make your lives more creative

1. Space
‘You can't become playful, and therefore creative, if you're under your usual pressures.’

2. Time
‘It's not enough to create space; you have to create your space for a specific period of time.’

3. Time
‘Giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original’

4. Confidence
‘Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.’

5. Humour
’The main evolutionary significance of humour is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else.’

Cracking stuff.

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones
www.ChrisJonesBlog.com
Follow me on @LivingSpiritPix
My movies www.LivingSpiritGroup.com
My Facebook www.Facebook.com/ChrisJonesFilmmaker

John Cleese On Creativity

What is Silicon Valley’s greatest reigning monopoly? How did PayPal manage to emerge from the dotcom implosion? Can you build a great tech company and keep it private forever? And how did Elon Musk manage to wreck an uninsured, million-dollar car with Peter Thiel in the passenger seat speeding on the way to a VC meeting? Marc Andreessen and Thiel discuss all of it in a wide-ranging conversation that toggles off the topics in Thiel’s new book “Zero to One.”

a16z Podcast: The (Definite) Optimism of Peter Thiel

When it comes to design thinking, few do it better than Tristan Walker.  Early in his career, the award winning, 30-year-old entrepreneur served as an intern at then fledgling "microblogging" site, Twitter.   Later, he moved on to become the golden child of Foursquare, helping build it to the point of cultural critical mass.  And now in addition to co-founding Code 2040, an organization designed to discover and create successful minority techies, Tristan helms his own Andreessen Horowitz supported operation, Walker & Company, focused on creating suite of non-digital, consumer conscious products.   On Innovation Crush, Walker breaks down his mastery of designing products and relevant marketplace experiences for his customers, building a team focused on innovation and diversity, and how his humble upbringing shapes his business thinking today.

www.getbevel.com 
www.code2040.org

#69:  Tristan Walker - Razor Sharp Design Thinking

"Different is better than better." - Sally Hogshead

If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/179.

On iTunes

EP 179 Leverage Your Strengths to Fascinate Your Audience with Sally Hogshead

O'Reilly's Mary Treseler chats with AlertMe founder Pilgrim Beart about why the scale of the Internet of Things creates as many challenges as it does opportunities. He also talked about the “gnarly problems” emerging from consumer wants and behaviors.

"Internet of Things" Has Come to Mean Everything, and Therefore Nothing

Tim O'Reilly chats with Google X's Astro Teller about moonshots, the relationship between technology and society, the learning process for hardware, and more.

To Create the Future We Want, We Need More Moonshots

O'Reilly's Mac Slocum chats with Fjord's Andy Goodman about zero UI and the move toward intangible interfaces, and Cory Doctorow addresses the problems inherent in the Digital Millennium Copyright Act .

Moving Toward a Zero UI to Orchestrate the IoT

O'Reilly's Mary Treseler chats with Microsoft designer Cindy Alvarez about how design is changing, how the approach to design at Microsoft is changing, and user research misperceptions and challenges. She also offers advice to those who are insisting all designers should code.

Design is How Users Feel When Experiencing Products

Messaging app WeChat tells us a lot about mobile and business in China. In a recent deep-dive primer on the WeChat phenomenon, a16z partner Connie Chan analyzed WeChat and the notion of app-within-apps, payments as a gateway drug, platforms vs portals, and what happens when utility is more important than being "social". Wired senior writer David Pierce also describes the power of conversational messaging as the main interface, further arguing that “A great messaging app could be to the web browser what the browser was to the internet before it.”

So what happens when a messaging app essentially becomes an operating system for our lives? What conditions made the mobile, business, and cultural environment in China so ripe for a phenomenon like WeChat? How does voice change everything? And, let's face it, what are the tradeoffs users (both consumer and business) as well as developers may have to make when one app does in fact rule an entire ecosystem? Connie and David discuss on this episode of the a16z Podcast. Plus what happens to loneliness, work-life balance, and more.

a16z Podcast: Messaging As the Interface to Everything

Can digital work fight poverty? Can companies be profitable and also do social good -- especially in a society where the proxy for value is capital and much of that value accrues to platforms? And finally, what's the difference between a mission-driven and 'social' entrepreneur?
 
Samasource, a nonprofit that uses technology to connect marginalized people around the world to digital work, is one attempt at answering those questions. In this segment of the a16z Podcast, we talk with founder and CEO Leila Janah about employment of all kinds -- from sweatshop work to the gig economy to remote work. Janah also argues what the nonprofit world should borrow from for-profit startups -- including attitudes around failure and better measures of success.

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The views expressed here are those of the individual AH Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) personnel quoted and are not the views of a16z or its affiliates. Certain information contained in here has been obtained from third-party sources, including from portfolio companies of funds managed by a16z. While taken from sources believed to be reliable, a16z has not independently verified such information and makes no representations about the enduring accuracy of the information or its appropriateness for a given situation.
 
This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. You should consult your own advisers as to those matters. References to any securities or digital assets are for illustrative purposes only, and do not constitute an investment recommendation or offer to provide investment advisory services. Furthermore, this content is not directed at nor intended for use by any investors or prospective investors, and may not under any circumstances be relied upon when making a decision to invest in any fund managed by a16z. (An offering to invest in an a16z fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.) Any investments or portfolio companies mentioned, referred to, or described are not representative of all investments in vehicles managed by a16z, and there can be no assurance that the investments will be profitable or that other investments made in the future will have similar characteristics or results. A list of investments made by funds managed by Andreessen Horowitz (excluding investments and certain publicly traded cryptocurrencies/ digital assets for which the issuer has not provided permission for a16z to disclose publicly) is available at https://a16z.com/investments/.

Charts and graphs provided within are for informational purposes solely and should not be relied upon when making any investment decision. Past performance is not indicative of future results. The content speaks only as of the date indicated. Any projections, estimates, forecasts, targets, prospects, and/or opinions expressed in these materials are subject to change without notice and may differ or be contrary to opinions expressed by others. Please see https://a16z.com/disclosures for additional important information.

a16z Podcast: Connecting People with Digital Work, the Gig Economy, and More

O'Reilly's Mary Treseler chats with Suzanne Pellican, VP and executive creative director at Intuit, about three core principles of design thinking and about Intuit’s journey to become a design-driven organization.

Reconciling Design Thinking With the Craft of Design Doing

Ben Einstein chats with David Cranor and O'Reilly's Jon Bruner about critical issues for hardware startups.

Ben Einstein on Accelerating Hardware Startups

This week, I sit down with anthropologist, futurist, Intel Fellow, and director of interaction and experience research at Intel, Genevieve Bell. We talk about what she’s learning from current AI research, why the resurgence of AI is different this time, and five things that are missing from the AI conversation.

Genevieve Bell on Moving From Human-Computer Interactions to Human-Computer Relationships

This week, I sit down with Tom Davenport. Davenport is a professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, the co-founder of the International Institute for Analytics, a fellow at the MIT Center for Digital Business, and a senior advisor for Deloitte Analytics. He also pioneered the concept of “competing on analytics.” We talk about how his ideas have evolved since writing the seminal work on that topic, Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning; his new book Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines, which looks at how AI is impacting businesses; and we talk more broadly about how AI is impacting society and what we need to do to keep ourselves on a utopian path.

Tom Davenport on Mitigating AI's Impact on Jobs and Business

In this week's Radar Podcast, O’Reilly’s Mac Slocum chats with Sara Watson, a technology critic and writer in residence at Digital Asia Hub. Watson is also a research fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia and an affiliate with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard. They talk about how to optimize personalized experience for consumers, the role of machine learning in this space, and what will drive the evolution of personalized experiences.

Sara Watson on Optimizing Personalized Experiences

This week, I sit down with David Beyer, an investor with Amplify Partners. We talk about machine learning and artificial intelligence, the challenges he’s seeing in AI adoption, and what he thinks is missing from the AI conversation.

AI Adoption at the Atomic Level of Jobs and Work

This week, I sit down with Aman Naimat, senior vice president of technology at Demandbase, and co-founder and CTO of Spiderbook. We talk about his project to build a knowledge graph of the entire business world using natural language processing and deep learning. We also talk about the role AI is playing in those companies today and what’s going to drive AI adoption in the future.

Aman Naimat on Building a Knowlege Graph of the Entire Business World

An inspiring commencement address delivered to the graduating class at San Jose State University. Transcript and discussion: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2013/05/15/debbie-millman-look-both-ways-fail-safe/

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Debbie Millman: Fail Safe

O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators. At O’Reilly, a big part of our business is paying attention to what’s new and interesting in the world of technology. We have a pretty good record at having anticipated some of the big technology developments in recent history. For instance, we launched the first commercial Web site, GNN, in 1993; we organized the meeting at which the term “open source” was first adopted; we were early investors in Blogger, which helped launch the blogging revolution; and more recently, our Web 2.0 conference launched a world-wide meme. We call this predictive sense the “O’Reilly Radar.” And while we’re certainly not always right, we are, at least, good at making interesting guesses.

Our methodology is simple: we draw from the wisdom of the alpha geeks in our midst, paying attention to what’s interesting to them, amplifying these weak signals, and seeing where they fit into the innovation ecology. Add to that the original research conducted by our Research team, and you start to get a good picture of what the technology world is thinking about.