Can History's Innovators Teach Us How to Persist Through 2020?

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1:11ADDY IGNATIOUS, Editor in Chief of Harvard Business Review. Hi, I'm Adi Ignatius, Editor in Chief of Harvard Business Review, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to the season's first episode of HBR Now. Our special guest today will be journalist and author Walter Isaacson, and we'll be bringing him in in just a moment. As many of you know, we originally launched this show back in April during lockdown. We called it HBR Quarantine, and we wanted to create a platform to connect with HBR's many readers who suddenly found themselves working from home. Our goal was to bring in an A-list of guests to talk about the big issues of the moment, the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, dislocations to the economy, and how all of these are affecting business and career paths.

1:52The response from all of you was overwhelming. We took a break for the summer, and now we're back. And when I say we, I mean as well my co-host from last season, Josh Macht, who heads product and innovation for HBR. And I'm thrilled to introduce our new co-host, Octavia Gordima. Octavia is a longtime career coach and the founder of the 2010 agency. She's now working on a book that's a career guide for underrepresented women. We also have a new sponsor for the season. So, in fact, let's hear now from our friends at Accenture.

2:26change is all around us shaped by technology and human ingenuity we can make it work for you and your business

2:39and one more little visual before i bring in our co-host and our guests we have a tradition of unearthing odd little tiktok videos that capture the moment we're living through so uh roll it engineer day i'd like to return this oh okay uh was there a problem a little bit too much fires ufos and police brutality did you unplug it and plug it back in i did and then a global pandemic and murder hornets appeared do you want to exchange that for 2021 no not a problem definitely defective right so let me josh and octavia first of all uh welcome josh to season two they said it was a pretend TV show. Well, now it's a pretend TV show with multiple seasons.

3:21Amazing. And I'm no longer at my house. This is our HBR Now studios at Boston in Brighton. That's a big change. And special welcome to Octavia for joining us as co-host this season. Welcome, Octavia. Oh, thank you. Yeah. So, Octavia, maybe talk a little bit about yourself for people who are just getting to know you? Yeah, so I'm in Los Angeles and I'm a career coach, the founder of 2010 Agency. I coach professionals across the country and I'm also writing a book, a career guide for underrepresented women. So really thrilled to join you guys and be a part of the show. So we're happy to have you here.

4:03And I'm curious who, because we were so lucky to get you to agree to join us on the show, Who would be your absolute dream guest, not including Walter? Yeah, not including Walter. Well, in addition to Walter, my dream guest would be Ros Brewer, the chief operating officer at Starbucks. Her resume is just formidable. In addition to her role at Starbucks, she's on the board at Amazon. She was the president and CEO at Sam's Club. There'd be so much to talk about. All right. Well, put out the big ass. Yes. Yeah. So so just to get us into the conversation. So picking up on the TikTok video, I mean, this this is a year like none other.

4:46I, you know, years from now, we will remember where we were in 2020. The combination combination of pandemic recession, a very consequential U.S. election is almost more than any of us can can bear. The election is foremost in my mind right now. Hey, Chicago, class it up with Crocs. You know, back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local Croc store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up. It shows off. First day fits handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Croc store today.

5:30When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Now, you know, the one four years ago laid bare how conventional understanding of the electorate, of the how bad conventional understanding of the electorate was and how inadequate our forecasting tools were.

6:12We had figured that we'd be better equipped this time around with better data and better sources. And then COVID-19 hit. So we really don't know what's happening. How many people will vote? How will they vote? How will the ballots be counted? What external forces will disrupt the campaign? Will anyone even trust the result? It's interesting to me to see political analysts with polling data in hand that seems to indicate clearly what will happen on November 3rd. But no one dares trust it after what happened in 2016 and with all the disruption since then. Josh, what's your take on the moment? I mean, I find it on the election side, this is just, it's got to be one of the most extraordinary moments ever.

6:50I find the backdrop of what we're living through. And the whole idea, I think everyone's so tense with the election and then the winter coming and this notion of like really going into the tough, into the teeth of, especially in the Northeast where we are, this idea that, you know, it feels like we're heading into this very tumultuous time. On the other hand, there's sort of a lot of reasons to sort of think next year we could even start to see some progress and reasons to be optimistic. And so I try not to lose sight of that on the other side as well. How about you, Octavia? Yeah, I agree with all of that.

7:28And I think front of mind really for me is the impact on our next generation in terms of education and also the educators. You know, I'm in awe of what my kids' teachers and the 3.2 million public teachers across America are doing day in, day out. You know, right now my kids are in class on Zoom because in our school district, our schools are still closed. And we're just having to take it day by day and just figure out what comes next. And I know as a parent, I'm not used to not having the answers in terms of how this is going to be. And so there's just some really profound and important questions that are happening right now on the ground, as well as we look to our decision makers in terms of what's to come with the election.

8:14All right. All good. If you just if you just tuned in, this is HBR Now. It's time to bring in our guest, Walter Isaacson, has led an amazing career with many interesting chapters. He spent 25 years at Time magazine and served as its top editor from 1996 to 2001. He then served as CEO of CNN and a CEO of the Aspen Institute. And he's probably best known as the author of many bestselling books that chronicle the lives of some of the world's most innovative minds. Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs, Leonardo da Vinci, and more. These days, he's also a professor at Tulane University in his hometown of New Orleans.

8:51Walter, welcome to HBR Now. Hey, thank you. It's good to see you again, Adi. Yeah, yeah. It's also possible he was formerly my boss. So let's start right in. I'd love to start with the U.S. election. We're two weeks away from what really seems like the most consequential election in memory. But I want to ask, is it? I mean, you know, as a chronicler of history and of great individuals and someone who sat atop Time magazine for years as it tried to take the pulse of the nation, what's your take? Is this more consequential than others, or do we just say that every four years?

9:22Walter Isaacson:No, this is more consequential than others. This is a major divide in our society, and not since 1968 have we had such polarizing forces in our society. And in this case, we have a president who is actually putting fuel to the flame of the divisiveness and polarization. So I think it's an election about whether the country is going to be able to get unified again or whether we keep this path of divisiveness. Whatever you may think of the ideologies of either party, this one has deep consequences and an administration that is really...

10:21First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Crock store today. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

10:59Walter Isaacson:Torn down some of the norms and structures we have in our society. For those who are just joining us, this is HBR Quarantine. If you have questions for Walter Isaacson, please put them in the comments box and we'll try to get to as many as we can. I mean, Walter, as you think back, are there any parallels in history, though, where things seem to be really kind of out of whack, and yet they sort of came back to a norm that the center reemerged, the center held? Yeah, I think America is that way. I can quote Albert Einstein, one of my biography subjects, when he comes to America, he finds after World War II the rise of Joe McCarthyism.

11:42Walter Isaacson:and that sort of very bitter attacks on people like J. Robert Oppenheimer, who worked with Einstein on the atomic bomb project, questioning their loyalty. And Einstein writes to his son, Hans Albert, I've seen this before. I've seen this movie before. I've seen it where the Nazis took over and then when the communists took over. And then two years, three years later, after Eisenhower gets elected, a great president who calmed the nation down, Eisenhower and the mainstream press like Edward R. Murrow and the army hearings bring Joe McCarthy down. And Einstein says, it's amazing, America's democracy.

12:24Walter Isaacson:It seems to have an inner gyroscope, because when you think it's going to tip over, it knows how to write itself. Do you have any reason to doubt that America still has that gyroscope? I think we still have the gyroscope. I mean, we're going to see a lot in this election because part of the gyroscope is the institutional norms and the checks and balances. And those have been under assault. And this is not just an American thing. There's been a populist and authoritarian populist backlash around the world that I think people like us and by people like us, I mean people who read the Harvard Business Review, should make some pains to understand.

13:03Walter Isaacson:because a lot of the conventional wisdom that we supported ended up being wrong, where people were left behind by globalization. People were messed up by everything from free trade to technology to immigration. That backlash and that tribalism and nationalism, you can see it from Turkey to Hungary, even to the Brexit election, and certainly to Trump. So I think it's not just a U.S. question of whether we bounce back, but whether the idea of market-based liberal constitutional democracies can survive. So let's turn, I have a feeling my co-hosts are going to want to talk to you more later about the election, but I want to talk about innovation because that's really at the heart of a lot of the books that you've written.

13:49And the list of people you've written about are are varied, Einstein, Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Da Vinci, Kissinger, they're all very different. But I'm sure you've thought about what maybe are common characteristics that elevate talented, hardworking people to this higher level of really of game-changing achievement. Can you talk about some of those?

14:11Walter Isaacson:DAVID BROOKS, When I started to discuss with Steve Jobs writing his book, I said, why do you want me? And he said, because everybody you've written about has stood at the intersection of the arts and the sciences. They're interested in everything from the humanities to engineering. And by seeing things across nature, he said, I mean, all of nature's wonders, you can see the patterns of nature. And so it did occur to me, because you remember, I'm sure you've been or seen some of them, whenever Steve Jobs launched a product, he'd end with that slide on the screen of the intersection between the liberal arts and technology.

14:46Walter Isaacson:He said, if you stand at that intersection, that creativity happened. And I realized that was true of Benjamin Franklin, who was everything from a writer and an artist and a musician to a scientist. And we sometimes think of him as. Hey, Chicago, class it up with Crocs. You know, back to school is coming in fast. So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. because the right pair doesn't just show up, it shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Croc store today.

15:29When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

15:59Walter Isaacson:The doddering dude flying a kite in the rain. But those electricity experiments were the most important scientific experiments of the time. Same with Einstein. When he's stumped on general relativity, he pulls out his violin and plays Mozart. And the culmination of that is Leonardo da Vinci, who is both a great artist, but also an anatomist and a zoologist and loves to know, as Benjamin Franklin, Steve Jobs and Einstein did, everything you could possibly know about every subject knowable. So I'm going to tout an HBR product. We're publishing a book next month called Invent and Wander, which is the collected writings of Jeff Bezos, the CEO of Amazon.

16:41Walter has written a really fine introduction, original introduction to that book. You know, can you talk a little bit about about Bezos? I mean, he seems to be the most successful business person of our generation, a really interesting mind. What's what's your take on Jeff Bezos?

16:56Walter Isaacson:Well, as I say in the introduction to this wonderful book, Invent and Wander, which is out next month from HBR Press, he has these same characteristics of ever since he was a little kid growing up in Miami, but also his grandfather's ranch in Texas, he was curious about everything. He loved, of course, space travel, but he loved business. He loved nature, and he loved books and writing and philosophy. And so somebody who not only had a passion and a curiosity for everything, But that enthusiasm that's captured in his almost manic laugh, when I looked at the way he grew up, when I talked to him about his childhood and all the way through, it's you don't create the everything store unless you're interested in everything.

17:48Walter Isaacson:And you're not able to tie business and arts and the humanities and literature to commerce to technology to engineering unless you have that enthusiasm for everything. So I tried to capture that in the introduction to Invent and Wander. Sounds like a great book. I sort of think everyone should go out and preorder a copy on Amazon right now. I hope Amazon gives you a discount. They don't give discounts. So the last thing I want to talk to you about, and then I want to bring in Octavia and Josh, and that's leadership. Some of the people you've studied are effective business and political leaders.

18:29We're in a moment now that seems to call for extraordinary leadership, people who can guide us, who can comfort us, who can feel the way forward and also feel our pain. Talk about what does it take to be a great leader today? And has that changed in the past decades?

18:45Walter Isaacson:Well, I don't think there's any one formula for great leadership. And I wrote about it for the Harvard Business Review once when I did the 10 lessons from Steve Jobs is a story that you and I worked on and ran in your magazine, which is you need certain leaders like Steve Jobs who are abrasive and aggressive, and they're just going to have a reality distortion field and barrel through things. But every now and then, you need a great leader like a Tim Cook, who knows how to consolidate things, get things done, and build great teams, as Steve Jobs also did. So I think that when I wrote about Benjamin Franklin, that's the greatest team ever, which is the founders of this nation.

19:26Walter Isaacson:But you had to have passionate people like John and Sam Adams. You had to have a person of great rectitude like George Washington and brilliant people like Jefferson and Madison, and also people who were the glue that would bring them together, like Benjamin Franklin. So, you know, Jeff Bezos has a particular style of leadership. I think each of us, when we lead, when I had to lead CNN or Time Magazine or Aspen. I figure out what do I like to do as a leader and then how do I create a team around me to become a great leader. But the traits we need now. Hey, Chicago, class it up with Crocs. You know back to school is coming in fast.

20:06So why wait to find your new fave footwear? Step into a local Crocs store and step into your new look. Try it. Style it. Make it yours. Because the right pair doesn't just show up, it shows off. First day fits, handled. Walk out ready for whatever's next. Visit your nearest Croc store today. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes.

20:46Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Now to get back to the point of your question, sometimes you need a certain type of traits

21:04Walter Isaacson:for a particular time, just as you needed a Steve Jobs at the birth of the personal computer revolution. And you listed the traits that I feel we need now is empathy, honor, this notion that you want to bring people together, that there's some unity, that we're one nation with one mission. And that especially comes from a trait that some leaders have and others don't. It was not Steve Jobs' greatest trait, which is deep empathy for the feelings of other people. All right. So let me bring in Octavia and Josh to ask more questions of Walter. And I'll be peppering in questions from our audience as well.

21:48Again, if you want to pose a question to Walter, type it in the comments box. Again, this is HPR Now. And over to my co-host. So, Walter, I'm curious because you're clearly right about people with that intersection as you talk about art and science. And I don't necessarily think of Donald Trump that way, but yet he is this figure who consumes our thoughts and our tweets all the time. Are you compelled at all to think about him as someone you might want to do a biography on? And I'm curious how you can look at his traits in contrast or comparison to some of the people that you've talked about.

22:27Walter Isaacson:No, I have no interest in, I'm sure there are other people who write biographies on Donald Trump. It's not something that interests me. And I think that Donald Trump was able to tap into a deep sense of resentment, some anger, and some sense that people had been frustrated by an elite, an establishment that had left them behind, that looked down upon them. And that was something that I think a lot of people, especially in the media and on the coast, didn't quite feel. I'm down in Louisiana and when I drive around, you know, especially in the middle of America, I understand a sense of frustration and resentment.

23:10Walter Isaacson:I think that was Donald Trump's ability, which is to tap into anger and to stoke resentments. But that's not a leadership trait that I either admire or that I would ever want to write about. So, Walter, earlier this month, Jennifer Doudna and Emmanuelle Chupontier were announced as the winners of the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. And Dr. Doudna is the subject of your next book, The Codebreaker. What drove your desire to tell her story? Well, I think it was, you know, the Nobel Prize Committee put it best when they said that this is about the code of life. This is a type of science that will change epochs.

23:55Walter Isaacson:When I wrote about Einstein, it was because the first half of the 20th century was a century of physics that came out of Einstein's papers. whether it was relativity or quantum theory, what you end up with is everything from atom bombs to semiconducting materials to GPS to space travel, that sort of thing. Then the second half of the 20th century, I think was a century in which innovation was driven by digital technology. And it comes with three great inventions in the early 1950s, which is the computer, the transistor or microchip, and then the network. And when those three combine, you get a digital revolution.

24:39Walter Isaacson:I think the first half of the 20th century will be a biotech revolution based on what happened in 2000, which was the sequencing of the human genome, but also based on what Dr. Doudna and Dr. Charpentier discovered, which is easy to use tools where we can not only read the DNA. You want to know what quality sounds like? It sounds like a Ford Super Duty towing up to 40 ,000 pounds before the sun comes up. It sounds like a Ford Mustang doing what a Mustang does. Ford, J.D. Power's number one in initial quality among mainstream brands. Ready, set, board. When properly equipped, max towing varies based on cargo, vehicle configuration, accessories, and number of passengers.