Innovation and Decision-Making

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I think we tend to assume that big companies don't innovate or they innovate at a lower rate than startups. I was recently chatting with some people at a big pharmaceutical company. The people in the strip mall have no time for any of that. They're just doing stuff they think might be interesting. So I think there's a bit of a myth of big companies not actually being capable of innovation out there.

We all face fork-in-the-road moments in our lives. In his 2005 bestseller “Blink,” Next Big Idea Club curator (and this episode’s guest interviewer) Malcolm Gladwell famously argued that snap judgments can be just as effective as meticulous planning. In this lively conversation, author Steven Johnson (“Farsighted”) disagrees, arguing that big, complex decisions require careful thought and scenario-building.