Esther Dyson: "On Wall Street People Think that if You Just Throw Money at Companies or You Make Mergers, You're Going to Build Something New But You’re Not – You're Just Throwing Money at Something"
According to Esther Dyson, an independent investor and writer, success is about doing something new that is useful, making new mistakes and learning from them. She also believes that changing culture, people working together and people taking responsibility for results is something every company needs.
1. What do you think makes you successful in terms of what can you do better than others?
You know, success is one of those where it has no content, and first you define what success is and than you either achieve that or you don’t. To me success is to do something new that is useful and keep doing new things that are useful and to always make new mistakes, which is my model and to learn from those mistakes. So, I’m extremely successful because I keep doing things that I’ve never done before and I try to do things that no one else has done before either, in some sense. You know, if somebody has already done it why should I should I do it again? And, I love what I do and I like doing these new things, and so I’m extremely successful by my own definition and that’s the one that really matters.
2. How can you find these new things that have never been done before?
Every problem is really an opportunity to do something new that clearly haven’t been done if the problem wouldn’t exist. So, the moment you really define a problem you could start thinking about a solution. One thing we’ve doing here in Russia this week to some extent is trying to turn all these problems into opportunities. Sometimes people would prefer not to discuss the problems but you can’t ever fix the problem that you cannot discuss. So, that’s how you find them: look for a problem and that’s where you can do something new.
3. How do you make people want to discuss their problems?
People don’t like discussing problems, but my training as a journalist is asking people questions they don’t particularly want to answer and figuring out what’s really going on. It’s amazing what good training journalism is doing for business because in business you need to know what’s going on and often you need to ask people questions they don’t want to answer, so, that’s what I do. And then, I think how can I fix this and, usually, I can but I can try and find other people who can together create the solution.
4. Can you tell us some concrete story about one such solution?
I’ll talk about one that hasn’t yet happened, which is text4baby project. It’s a great idea: a woman finds out she’s pregnant, she sends an SMS to the number, they send an SMS back. You know, what is your name, when did you get pregnant, how much do you weight, do you smoke, how much do you drink, and then it sends back a message saying your baby is due on such and such a date, we’ll write to you again in a week. A week later they say, how much do you weight, have you reduced your smoking – if the woman smokes, have you stopped drinking. And then every week – or it could be every day, the system obviously can be parameterized – the woman gets these messages and sends the answers back, and the answers are going to computer and as long as the answers are within certain parameters – that’s fine, they just keep sending you messages and recording your data and so forth. But, you know, she says she hasn’t stop drinking or she says the baby is kicking or isn’t kicking when it should be, or instead of gaining weight, she’s losing weight, or who knows? Then they say, based on your answers we think you should go see a doctor, here is the coordinates of the local clinic depending on where she lives. Or, you know, whatever it is. It’s two way, it’s coordinated, it’s a great use of technology, it solves the problem that bothers both the US and Russia, which is maternal health.
5. How do you make that happen?
So, how do you make that happen? Well, you’ll need the software, which is where I first got involved, because there is a company called Voxiva that has the back in software to develop this application. And in the US we then got in touch with the GSM association, we found some sponsors, we found some marketing partners, and it was such a good idea, we talked to the US White House, and we finally got White House support, and we announced it a few weeks ago. And anyone can see it, it’s Text4Baby.org. Thousands of women has signed up, and what we are going to do is we are going to offer the service and also collect the data to show whether it actually helped or not. The women who are on this program, do they have better health outcome than the overage population? So, we’ll find out. Now we need to make the same thing happen in Russia. So, first, we need to find someone who is responsible for the project, and that’s Elena Dimitrieva at Healthy Russia Foundation. Then, you need to find, again, the partners. You need to find to coordinate with the Telcos so that they could provide the SMS what they should do in exchange for a good marketing and PR. You need to find some commercial sponsors. You need to find the government, to make sure the messages are according the regulations. You need to find local clinics, so that if there is something wrong for the women you know where to send them. And you need to find a sort of a local administration that wants this program to be tried out in their region. And, getting all these people to talk together and to make this thing happened, that’s Elena’s job now and she’s doing it.
6. It sounds very "easy"…
Well, no, it’s very hard, because you try to talk to these people and they’re busy, and she also needs to figure out how to make the software work in Russian, so she needs to find some programmers and I’m going to try to help her to do that. So, you figure out what do you need to do to achieve what you are trying to achieve and then you figure out who you need to help you to do that and you go to them. No, of course it’s not easy. If it were easy someone would already have done it.
7. Can you be more specific on how you make people recognize problems?
Let’s say the Russian administration asks about innovation and technology and modernization, and so, I don’t go in and I say: "Oh, your country is a mess, do you need innovation and technology and I’ll tell you how to fix it." I went in and I said: "You know, two weeks ago I was at NASA, where I’m – completely by coincidence – on the Innovation and Technology Committee." And they have this problem; they were great organization fifty years ago. They got people in the space, forty years ago they got people to the moon. You know, a scientific leader, the space program, JFK, they were magnificent. They had huge amounts of innovation and they were daring, and proud, and leaders, and science, and so forth. And now they kind of become beaten down and their projects are always late and their shuttles stopped flying, they are going to be relying on Soyuz to get up in space. So, the challenge is: how do you revive innovation and technology in NASA? And the answer is not to give them bigger budget, the answer is – stop doing the Constellation program. There is a new budget from Obama that cuts the Constellation program and says let the private sector do the basic – taking people to the orbit because we know how to do that, so let the private sector do that for money. And we will start innovating on getting people beyond the moon – to Mars. But in order to do that they need a different culture because right now the NASA culture has become very risk verse, and you should be risk verse when you send people in the space, but you should not be risk averse when you’re designing new rockets – send them in the space with no people and see if they crush. So, one thing you need to do is just do more experiments and you need to change the attitude of people towards taking risk and making mistakes. And it’s not a question of money, and it’s not a question of, actually, science. It’s a question of attitudes and culture and the kinds of people they hire, and what they do when you make a mistake, how they allocate budgets. All these stuff. And it seems to me that it’s the same in Russian government.
8. Do you have more examples?
For another example, on Wall Street people think that if you just throw money at companies or you make mergers, you’re going to build something new but you’re not. You’re just throwing money at something. At the same time I must say, to some extent, the American delegation has this idea that if you just throw social networks at people, if you just let them get online – everything will magically happen. And I don’t think that either side is correct. I think what you really need, again, is changing culture, you need people working together and you need people taking responsibility for results. So, nothing is going to happen unless you have a date, a plan and the person who is responsible for the plan. Whether it’s a huge project and then you have one person responsible for the whole thing and then sub plans and more sub plans, and then coordination or one person responsible for a specific project. Someone needs to be accountable for making it happen. And then they can share that accountability by delegating the responsibility. But in the end, someone needs to be in charge, who says, "I will take responsibility if it doesn’t work". And that’s the kind of culture NASA needs, the kind of culture small company needs. And it’s, actually, the kind of understanding just telling two people, "Oh, you should meet online". You know, nothing is going to happen. You have to, actually, make them meet. Then you need to follow up and make sure that… you know, one person writes an email and the other one doesn’t answer, and they both say: "Well, he never answered". Sometimes you need two or three steps along the way to make it happen. Then, it will happen. But you have to stay there until the thing catches fire, until the spark, actually, ignites the flame.
9. It’s typical for many people to be not willing to do something in a different way…
Well, if you have a new way of doing something, you need to explain why it’s going to work, and the explanation needs to be convincing. You need to give them assurance that if they fail, they can try again or they can learn. I mean, you need to help them. So, this is the single best management story I know. There was a guy, he worked at Olivetti, he worked at Xerox. He was Italian, he came to the US. I had him speak at the conference I ran, and so I needed to write his bio. I said, "Vittorio," – his name was Vittorio Casani -, "Vittorio, tell me about yourself." And he started telling me about renaissance elite and art. I said, "Vittorio, I mean, as a manager, tell me what do you do as a manager" – "I absorb uncertainty". That’s all. In other words, he told his people, "These are the things I want you to do and go do them. If it doesn’t work, I’ll take care of you". And, obviously, if you are a good manager you know who to take care of and who, in the end, you don’t absorb uncertainty for. You give them the ability to go do what they need to do, and you take care if the uncertainty is around it, if it fails, if it’s not the right thing. Because people are always worried, they don’t know what to do, they’re not sure. He not only delegated responsibility, but he took away the uncertainty. As long as you fulfill what I asked you to do, I’ll make sure things are ok for you. You need to absorb the uncertainty for them. Not the uncertainty of "will it work", but the uncertainty of "if it doesn't work, will I be punished". You need to give them courage sometimes. I mean the best leaders have their own courage but a good leader provides courage to the employees.
