The Soul of Enterprise: Business in the Transformation Economy

Join Ed and Ron as they interview Warren Berger, author of A More Beautiful Question and The Book of Beautiful Questions. Warren defines himself as a questionologist. To him, any question that causes people to shift their thinking is a beautiful one. They steer you in the right direction at critical moments when you’re trying to decide on something; create something; connect with other people; and be a good and effective leader.

Are we getting closer to herd immunity? Will there be an effective COVID-19 vaccine by the end of the year? Will schools reopen? Will there be another expansion of government subsidies? As COVID cases increase, will more states lockdown again? Join Ed and Ron for all these questions and more, on our update on the COVID-19 economy.

Join us as we celebrate the 300th episode of The Soul of Enterprise. Ron and Ed will have the tables turned on them and will be interviewed by Matthew Burgess, a previous Guest on the show. Matthew has promised some fun conversation and insights into the workings of the show. A BIG THANK YOU to YOU, our audience, who has made this all possible.

Ed and Ron are thrilled to bring back Howard Hansen, coauthor of the groundbreaking book Healing Leadership - A Survival Guide for the Enlightened Leader. Here is a brief summary of what Healing Leadership is all about: We see leadership as primarily an emotional process, rather than a strategic one. It is about courage and being oneself, rather than strategies and techniques to change someone. It is being the one who says what he or she sees (The emperor has no clothes.) and letting people make their own choices accordingly. We call “bullshit” on traditional models of leadership and advocate for a rational approach to leadership that will not hinder meaningful change. Quite simply, the “Command and Conquer” style of leadership does not work, long term. What’s more, it ultimately proves to be toxic. Therefore, Healing Leadership is about giving up the irrational hope of trying to change others.

In his previous appearances, Dr. Paul has shared his experiences with subscription based pricing and COVID-19. In this episode, we will spend the balance of our time talking about his new book, Startup DPC: How To Start And Grow Your Direct Primary Care Practice. From the Foreword: We all know that our current healthcare system is broken, especially for primary care doctors and their patients. Primary care physicians have to see more and more patients in less and less time in order to keep up with declining reimbursement from insurance companies. This leads to rushed office visits, missed opportunities for genuine connections between doctors and their patients, frustrated patients, and burned out doctors. But it doesn't have to be this way.

We will know the blockchain has really made it when we stop talking about blockchain. So said Ron Quaranta, founder of the Wall Street Block Chain Alliance, during his last appearance on The Soul of Enterprise. This time Ron joins Sean Stein Smith, professor at Lehman College, to share their insights in to the latest news and use cases of the blockchain. Of course, we'll toss in some conversation about BitCoin since it is the most famous use case.

Ed and Ron are pleased to interview Jody Grunden, CEO and Co-Founder of Summit CPA. The firm adopted subscription pricing and we are eager to learn how he grew the firm from $600,000 in revenue in 2004 to $7,000,000 today. You don’t want to miss this episode!

Evolutionary biologists have proven that the more adapted you are in your existing environment, the less able you are to adapt to environmental changes. We blindly cling to “that is the way we have always done it” in defiance of the evidence that this way is no longer relevant to success. This is the history of business. New ideas, inventions, and business models from the tinkerer in the garage change the world, while rendering obsolete the existing modes of production, infrastructure, and business models. The automobile replaced the horse and buggy, the calculator replaced the slide rule, and the personal computer replaced the typewriter, and so on in a never-ending “perennial gale of creative destruction,” as described by economist Joseph Schumpeter. Clayton Christensen writes, “Generally, the leading practitioners of the old order become the victims of disruption, not the initiators of it.” Join Ed and Ron as they look at creative destruction, an essential process in a free market.

One of the epigraphs in Adam Thierer’s book is an old Chinese saying: “The higher-ups have measures. Those lower down have countermeasures.” Join Ed and Ron for a fascinating look at a new breed of entrepreneurs, Evasive Entrepreneurs, the title of Adam Thierer’s latest book. Evasive entrepreneurs, those innovators who don’t always conform to social or legal norms, are using new technological capabilities to circumvent traditional regulatory systems, or at least to put pressure on public policymakers to reform or selectively enforce laws and regulations that are outmoded, inefficient, or illogical. They rely on a strategy of permissionless innovation in both the business world and the political arena, following the adage that “it is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission.” A remarkably timely book given the COVID-19 crisis and all the useless regulations that have been suspended.

We are honored to welcome back Professor Deirdre McCloskey to discuss her work. No other body of work has had such a profound influence on our worldviews, especially with respect to how what she calls the Great Enrichment came about. Her latest scholarly book Bourgeois Equality: How Ideas, Not Capital or Institutions, Enriched the World, was the final volume of the Bourgeois Era trilogy. It argues for an “ideational” explanation of the Great Enrichment of 3,000 percent per person from 1800 to the present in places like Britain and Japan and Finland. The second book in the trilogy, Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World, had shown that materialist explanations such as saving or exploitation, don’t have enough economic oomph or historical relevance to explain the Enrichment. The inaugural book in the trilogy, The Bourgeois Virtues, had established that the bourgeoisie is pretty good, and that commercially tested betterment is not the worst of ethical schools.