Two Legends in Conversation: Reid Hoffman and Joi Ito
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Notes
RH = Reid and JI = Joi
* JI: MIT Media Lab funded by consortium of 80 companies (Lockheed Martin to Google to Fox News), 3 company visits a day
* RH: In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice
Media Lab
* $250K from 80 companies = $20M annually
* Get non-exclusive right to all their IP
* 2 annual meetings, 450 demos running
* Some companies add extra funding for students and projects
* Not grants — no deliverables or deadlines
* Some hiring — e.g., Samsung’s watch team came from Media Lab, Google
Hires
* Some companies have innovation surge, bring senior execs in for a few years to interact heavily
* Companies can propose ideas, data
JI
* Boston has lot of hardware, biotech expertise but SV catching up
* Compared to DSchool, brings people together and makes them leave their discipline, whereas DSchool has them come together and then they go back to their departments, Media Lab is “anti-disciplinary”
* Shenzhen: all aunts and uncles networked together that run these factories; design happens on factory floor, right in front of equipment
* “Deploy or die”
* Bitcoin is a hack on bookkeeping; thinks there will be a ton of innovation on the foundations of accounting and bookkeeping
* Don’t think we’re preparing people to be fully functional, testing culture, not about collaboration, but robots and computers can take care of factual knowledge and basic analyses
* MOOCs are about knowledge and skill delivery, but that’s not the main problem
* With open source, it’s peer learning
* It all goes back to jobs
* When you’re degree driven, it’s all about getting out of here, getting that degree and moving on
* Identity needs to be changed, goal should be: what is minimum amount of identity necessary to complete a process or transaction (e.g., if you’re going to library, shouldn’t need anything more than the face, and the knowledge that the face is approved to enter the library); market will demand it
RH
* Potential unlocking by letting the network be the source of authority, not just one node (e.g., DNS system)
* What should mature design of an ecosystem be? how can a startup facilitate that (e.g., Airbnb and housing regulations, bitcoin startups and financial regulations)?
* Privacy bar shifts over time
* Mark Pincus idea: create a “digital West Point”
Notes from kevinrandom.com.
