Your board of directors can make or break you. In fact, Reid believes, the wrong board member can break your company faster than the right board member can make it. Learn the five vital mindset shifts that can help you create a better board.
Too often, companies only focus on the type of scale that’s visible: massive campuses, thousands of workers, offices around the globe. But as Land O’Lakes proves, there are less conspicuous ways to scale – ways that supply your business with structural integrity. This is something CEO Beth Ford knows well.
How do you respond when your own users resist your data? That question is top-of-mind for Nielsen CEO David Kenny. For decades, Nielsen has measured ratings and demographics across TV and media. But as industry norms shift to streaming, Kenny has had to revamp expectations, taking heat from traditional customers. As he notes, nostalgia is the opposite of optimism – it assumes a known past is better than an unknown future. Kenny is choosing optimism.
Jessica Alba’s approach in founding and building The Honest Company revolves around three letters: IRL, a useful acronym for “In Real Life.” This phrase acts as a reminder for the company to shine the spotlight onto their customer’s real needs – not only to understand them, but to address them as well.
Last year, SolarWinds became the subject of a massive and sophisticated cyberattack, potentially affecting thousands of organizations. CEO Sudhakar Ramakrishna, who joined the company soon after the breach was discovered, speaks with host Bob Safian about how he and the company responded, and how other companies should approach the ever-looming threat of cyber-risk. “There is no such thing as ‘I won’t be breached because I’m too secure or too smart,’ says Ramakrishna. “You could be breached. And when it happens, be humble. Learn from it, adapt, and act with a sense of urgency.”
“Corporations can be a force for good,” says Ken Chenault, chair of investment firm General Catalyst and the longtime CEO of American Express. Ken has been an outspoken advocate for business leaders to engage in social issues. After George Floyd’s death, he and Merck CEO Ken Frazier launched OneTen, a coalition to create 1 million jobs for Black Americans with major brands like IBM, Nike, and Walmart. His Responsible Innovation platform builds “social due diligence.”
Amid 2020’s Covid lockdowns (and sweatpants-only life), Rent the Runway ran into layoffs and furloughs. But as co-founder and CEO Jenn Hyman explains, the business saw a surprising rebound early in 2021, fueled by a consumer focus on sustainability. Jenn’s experience shows how accelerated change is remaking the marketplace.
Shelli Taylor explains why the movie chain Alamo Drafthouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the spring of 2021, as movie-goers slowly began to return to theaters.
“The future is sooner and stranger than you think,” Reid Hoffman tells Rapid Response host Bob Safian, in this unfiltered conversation. “The rulebook will be changing month by month.” The co-hosts dive into US government stimulus efforts; Gamestop, SPACs and potential froth in the investment markets; rising pressure on business leaders to engage on social and policy issues; and how vaccinations are impacting all of us. Plus: the 10-year anniversary of Reid’s book “The Startup of You.”
The customer isn’t always right. As the founder and CEO of Beyond Meat, Ethan Brown has spent years navigating misconceptions about plant-based foods. But smart entrepreneurs listen instead of arguing. Only by obsessing over what customers say they want has Brown been able to create a product that succeeds in the marketplace. What every entrepreneur should learn: You must first build trust from customers, making sure they feel heard, before you can educate them about the value of your innovation.
Successful daredevils aren’t really winging it, even if it looks that way from the outside. They have a method. No one knows like Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group. Sir Richard has been willing to take death-defying entrepreneurial leaps again and again, into new markets and industries, as one of the most prolific, successful founders ever. You can’t help but marvel at his bias to action: his eagerness to ask “What if?” and then follow up. He shares how you too can learn to take the right leaps, in the right moments, to generate outsize opportunities.
As Chief Executive Officer of Feeding America, Claire Babineaux-Fontenot oversees the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization and second-largest U.S. charity. She details the immense challenge of responding to food insecurity during the pandemic.