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To be first to the future, be stubbornly nimble

How do you balance saving capital versus taking advantage of current opportunities? How do investors and founders evaluate risk differently? And how do you embrace disruptive new technology without sending the message that you’re replacing humans with robots? Reid Hoffman and Bob Safian answer these questions and more, all posed in a special live Strategy Session by entrepreneurs across many industries and stages of scale. Plus Reid shares how playing games can revolutionize the way you strategize as a leader.

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Make AI your co-pilot

Microsoft’s John Maeda

Rapid Response with Bob Safian: Can you truly take advantage of AI before speaking its language? Microsoft’s VP of Design and AI, Dr. John Maeda discusses AI’s common misconceptions and its misunderstood opportunities. A veteran of AI development, John shares valuable insights for entrepreneurs about how to engage with the new technology — from overcoming trepidation to making AI work harder for you — and AI’s potential to help leaders make better decisions.

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ChatGPT and AI’s inflection point

Reid Hoffman and Bob Safian sit down once more to discuss how today’s hot-button stories are impacting business. And right now, there’s no hotter topic than ChatGPT and the race to bring transformative AI tools into the mainstream. So in this special AI deep-dive, Reid and Bob discuss how ChatGPT has reignited the search engine wars, how we can expect AI to transform our work and leisure, ways to see through the hype, and how business leaders should get the jump on the AI inflection point.

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Podcast: Bonus

6 leadership traps and how to avoid them

For entrepreneurs and business leaders, the path to success is littered with traps. In this special episode of Masters of Scale, we go into the trenches with leaders from Google, Uber, LinkedIn, and more for inside stories on how to identify, decode, and surmount unexpected pitfalls — from organizational jams to overcommunication, from bloated meetings to bungled succession planning. Learn how to get out of, and avoid, these traps, for yourself and the entire organization.

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Podcast: Episode 125: Must Listen

The essential playbooks — and when to use them

Cisco’s John Chambers

All great teams need to improvise under pressure, but underpinning this should be a set of tried-and-tested playbooks that let you orchestrate and replicate winning strategies. Cisco’s John Chambers created a library of living playbooks — covering culture, acquisitions, crises, and more — to astounding effect as he took Cisco from a small tech supplier to the most valuable company on the planet.

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Podcast: Bonus

5 ways to build your tolerance for risk

Taking risks can be the catalyst for immense scale or dire straits. Avoiding taking any risks at all leads to stagnancy and empowered competitors. The key is to know which risks are worth taking, and when and how to take them. This episode highlights the best conversations we’ve had recently about taking advantage of risk and how fortune favors the brave.

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Podcast: Episode 117: Must Listen

The Wrongness Playbook, part 1

Patreon’s Jack Conte

Building a business means making mistakes. Lots of them. But how you’re wrong isn’t always obvious. Jack Conte has learned this lesson as a working musician — and while scaling Patreon into a company worth $4b. In Part One of a two-part series, you’ll hear how Jack wrote his own Wrongness Playbook, as he learned to answer questions like: If something isn’t working, is it time to trust your instincts? Or is there critical feedback you’ve been ignoring?

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Amazon’s plan to be big, green, and beloved

AWS CEO Adam Selipsky

Amazon wants to get bigger, but with that scale comes great responsibility. So says Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon Web Services, the most profitable and fastest growing part of the tech giant. Selipsky, who also oversees Amazon’s climate change efforts, points to two additions to the company’s vaunted “Leadership Principles” as evidence of Amazon’s commitment. Arguing that AWS is still in early days, he shares what he’s hearing from other CEOs about their biggest concerns, why “carbon intensity” is the best measure of climate progress for businesses, and what Amazon’s aspiration to be “Earth’s best employer” really means.

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Podcast: Episode 116: Must Listen

How to take creative leaps — and land them

Future Shape’s Tony Fadell

Creative energy is the raw fuel of entrepreneurship, but if you fail to direct that energy effectively, you risk chasing multiple ideas and delivering none. Tony Fadell learned this lesson time and again through his journey to co-create the iPod, iPhone, and Nest. He shares how he struck the tricky balance of channeling his creative experimentation into world-changing products.

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Turning tears into action

Planned Parenthood’s Alexis McGill Johnson

“Hope is a practice. It comes from doing.” As the head of Planned Parenthood, Alexis McGill Johnson is regrouping in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to remove the federal right to safe abortion. Johnson is now faced with the challenge to move her team from tears and shock to action. Any leader faced with a worst-case scenario can learn from her vision: “to fight and stay courageous, and maintain ourselves.”

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