Today's Superpower - Building Networks: 7 Mindset Principles to Thrive in a Fast-Changing World

By Mikel Mangold

In Today's Superpower - Building Networks: 7 Mindsets Principles to Thrive in a Fast-Changing World, Mikel Mangold explores the intersection between the new startup and multistakeholder economy, mindset and networks.

Change happens when people with a collaborative and ecosystem mindset are plugged into the right netwo

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: May 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9798885042369

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Today’s Superpower: Building Networks

Today’s Superpower: Building Networks

Seven Mindsets Principles to Thrive in a Fast-Changing World

MIKEL MANGOLD

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2022 MIKEL MANGOLD

All rights reserved.

Today’s Superpower: Building Networks

Seven Mindsets Principles to Thrive in a Fast-Changing World

ISBN

979-8-88504-127-0 Paperback

979-8-88504-757-9 Kindle Ebook

979-8-88504-236-9 Ebook

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part 1. THE IMPORTANCE OF NETWORKS FOR INNOVATION

Chapter 1. History of Innovation and Change-Making

Chapter 2. Networks Work; Here Is Why

Chapter 3. Six Things Silicon Valley Is Doing Right

Part 2. SEVEN MINDSET PRINCIPLES TO BUILD, JOIN, OR LEVERAGE THE POWER OF NETWORKS

Chapter 4. Principle 1: DO-IT-YOURSELF, Take Ownership

Chapter 5. Principle 2: Blow Up Your Borders

Chapter 6. Principle 3: Be of Value; Give before You Get

Chapter 7. Principle 4. Start Small, Grow Big, with Purpose

Chapter 8. Principle 5: Do What You Can’t

Chapter 9. Principle 6: Go Viral

Chapter 10. Principle 7: Be Bold and Have Skin in the Game!

Part 3. WHAT IS NEXT

Chapter 11. Future Outlook

Acknowledgments

Appendix

I dedicate this book to my parents, who always supported me in doing the things I am passionate about and never put pressure on me to get titles. To my brother Yannick and sister Léa-Marie Mangold.

Introduction

Carl Djerassi (1923–2015) changed the world with his breakthrough invention of the contraceptive pill. He grew up in a middle-class family in Austria but had to flee his homeland to escape Nazi outrage and ended up in Bulgaria. He learned English and immigrated to the USA with his family shortly after. At the very young age of sixteen, he started his undergraduate studies majoring in chemistry. This man dedicated years of work to academia and the industry. He decided to move to Mexico, where he could scale his innovative ideas through collaboration and team efforts.

Carl could change the world by starting his career in one specific field: chemistry. And he succeeded. However, let’s consider that Carl grew up in a time when companies were working in a vertical structure, meaning niche markets or products, e.g., chemicals, manufacturing, or construction. Career advice of that time was to focus on one specific topic. He couldn’t. Due to the war, he was forced to move countries and followed the best academic or industrial job openings. His problems turned to become opportunities. This mix of experience—a network of disciplines—made him go faster than his peers. Later, Carl discovered and promoted the importance of interdisciplinary networks.

I learned valuable insights about Carl from his interview with Roger Kornberg, editor of the Annual Review of Biochemistry and professor at the department of structural biology at the Stanford University School of Medicine, particularly about the importance of collaboration (Annual Reviews, 2012):

If I started my career again, I would not become a chemistry major. Pure chemistry is the discipline, but the fascinating part of chemistry is the connection to physics, material science, and biology; it’s the collaboration between them…the actual driving force.

Carl incorporated the knowledge he gained from past experiences into new projects, pushed boundaries, and broke down silos. His highly inquisitive nature led him to different fields such as history and art. He even became a fiction writer and a poet, and at the end of his life, he possessed a gigantic art collection. His relentless curiosity and open mindset to explore new fields was the main reason behind his ability to build novel transformative pharmaceuticals and agricultural products.

Have you ever wondered what solves the problems of our world and what influences how we live our daily lives? Through the birth control pill he developed, Carl empowered women by allowing them to choose when to become pregnant.

What enables people like Carl to change society? What made it possible for Steve Jobs to bring the iPhone and the Apple Store to people’s hands? Networks.

Why is it even more relevant today? You and I are witnessing the most significant change our civilization has ever faced. I have realized something particularly new to us, brought on by the new knowledge economy and the digitalization of everything: the availability of networks. In today’s world, it’s never been so easy to have access to them. I believe these networks can and should be used to create positive societal changes. More on what I mean by networks a little bit later in Chapter 2.

Over the last decade, I have noticed something interesting. Most of today’s innovations, products, and services combine several disciplines. Cars are now computers, medical hardware are directly connected to the cloud and uses predictive algorithms for improved care, materials are made with nanotechnologies to enhance their properties such as conductivity and transparency, and so on. Hence, nobody can create a significant change in today’s world without being connected to someone or something that provides the missing part for their big idea.

The Need for a Cross-Silo Approach

People like Carl Djerassi show us that implementing a significant change—like introducing the birth control pill to society—comes from a combination of ideas collected from different environments with different people, institutions, or organizations. One of my inspirations to write this book was to investigate if Carl’s experience was unique or something future change-makers could learn from.

As humans, we prefer comfort zones rather than dealing with the unknown. Most people worry about changing and pursuing new learning paths. However, we shouldn’t avoid it.

Have you heard about the acronym VUCA? Yes, Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity. This acronym became popular in the early 1980s to spread awareness about our world. Whether we like it or not, it’s a new reality. Not accepting uncertainty and working in silos—only on one business vertical—is an issue. I will try to convince anyone reading this book—with data and insights—that moving outside your silos is necessary to thrive, succeed, and change the world.

Of chemists, for example, Carl says (Annual Reviews, 2012):

The mode of operation of chemists dehumanizes you...In my department that contained more than twenty people, less than three people have read the books I read, have been to the places I have been to, and have been to the theaters I have been to. That cultural curiosity does not exist in the chemist community—most of them have little cultural intellectual curiosity...half of the Stanford chemist’s students have never been to a theater. I am very unhappy about this.

I can genuinely empathize with Carl here. As a chemist by training, I saw with my own eyes how the vast majority of my colleagues kept their interests restricted during their entire academic life. As a result, very few of them use their incredible knowledge to change the way we live and work. None of my chemist friends ended up being entrepreneurs. At least, until now. Many stopped being ambitious and tried to secure a safe job. I think this is sad because we lose educated people who would have been capable of leading a significant positive change like the one Carl led.

Most importantly, the current corporate model inspired by the industrial revolution is starting to fade. The weaknesses of this model can be seen in the statistics featured below.

The Problems Our Society Faces

Today, we live in an age of exponential technologies that drive our world forward—to name a few, artificial intelligence, the internet of things, 3D printing, blockchain, cloud computing. These digital technologies use network effects that can scale much faster than what we’ve previously experienced in the industrial world (Bonchek, 2016). As Peter Diamandis mentions, we will experience more change in this decade—2020 to 2030—than in the past one hundred years (Corbyn, 2020). On top of that, unpredictability is a new reality. McKinsey & Company investigated the latest trends in the article The Next Normal Arrives Trends That Will Define 2021—and Beyond. The article explores recent findings related to the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects: forcing people to work from home, boosting digital transformation, and changing consumer behavior in the long run. Furthermore, an increasing number of startups are being created, and more and more people are deciding to launch their businesses (Sneader and Singhal, 2021)

People within organizations are losing engagement and leaving their jobs, and in the worst-case scenario, getting fired. The gig economy is on the rise. A big wave of employees also experiences a lack of trust and belonging in their professional lives. Finally, the young generation feels hopeless about their future. The message is clear: There is a decline in corporate innovation, and corporations and individuals are no longer happy with the old model.

The following data points show our society faces a real crisis:

• According to Innosight’s 2016 report Corporate Longevity: Turbulence Ahead for Large Organizations, corporations in the S&P 500 Index in 1965 stayed there for thirty-three years on average. By 1990, the same index presented a reduction in the average tenure to twenty years. The future is even more revealing, with a forecast of only fourteen years by 2026 (Anthony, Viguerie, and Waldeck, 2016).

• Only 13 percent of employees are passionate and engaged at work (Hagel et al., 2017)

• An O.C. Tanner Learning Group study investigated over 200,000 people across ten years and revealed that 65 percent of employees reported a lack of recognition, and 79 percent of people who quit their jobs cite lack of appreciation as their reason for leaving.

• During the COVID-19 pandemic, a study in the UK surveyed 2,000 people aged sixteen to twenty-five, showing more than half (57 percent) of young people is scared about being unemployed and 43 percent are worried they will never be able to get a job (Harding, 2020).

• The COVID-19 crisis also pushed millions of workers to quit their job. This trend, called The Great Resignation, is mainly noticeable in the US and globally (Tharoor, 2021).

If our society continues heading in this direction, it may experience a shattering crisis. Just like in any other macroeconomic shock, the impact can be immense: billions of people will be affected and suffer from it, wealth disparity will increase, inflation and exponential growth in unemployment rates, not to mention the direct impact on the stability of governments and peace. At the same time, society’s biggest problems—such as climate change and our political order—will remain or even get worse.

We must change.

I am a millennial, and one thing for sure is my generation does not want to just work for money. We are looking for meaning and purpose. From the thousands of discussions I’ve had with the people I have met, I have noticed the strong desire of many individuals to change society for the better, but they feel stuck and don’t have any idea how to become a change agent. They don’t know where to start or how to scale an idea. For instance, my friend Duy, whom I met at TEDx San Francisco as a volunteer, mentioned he would love to help his home country Vietnam to better prepare for and alleviate the consequences of climate change. He believes climate action requires collective efforts from networks of people so change can happen sustainably. During our conversations, he said he would love to be part of the solution and serve his country, but unfortunately, he doesn’t know the starting point: How does one create and become the change?

I was motivated to write this book upon considering the complex problems our world faces today: COVID-19, political instability, corruption, deforestation, the extensive use of natural resources, the supply chain crisis, the double-digit decline of wildlife populations over just a few decades, inequitable access to education, the lack of inclusion, unemployment, poverty, and many other issues. Globally, a third of people globally don’t have access to safe drinking water. That’s one in three people—representing 2.2 billion people around the world. As if that’s not bad enough, 4.2 billion people do not have safely managed sanitation services, and three billion lack basic handwashing facilities (WHO, 2019).

Do you believe all these problems can be solved if only 13 percent of the workforce is engaged? The answer is crystal clear: It is impossible! We need more change-makers, more people who will dedicate their lives to solve problems. Using networks in today’s digital era is the opportunity.

What Is My Story? Why This Book?

As I mentioned earlier, I am a chemist by training. This also explains why I started this book with Carl Djerassi. I studied six and a half years of pure chemistry with a minor in cultural studies and communication. In addition to the four and half years I studied in Freiburg, Germany, I also studied for a year in France, eight months in Switzerland, and four months in Mexico. I realized that studying pure chemistry doesn’t make me an innovator, nor someone who can change society purely through business. My peers and I became well-disciplined scientists who knew where to research and how to present data. However, in general, scientists like to stay in their fields of expertise and avoid the macro-level analysis of a problem.

Companies around the world are spending millions of dollars on their innovation programs, looking for innovators and change-makers. However, merely spending energy and money is not an effective strategy for innovation. The real change drivers are the individuals who both have the right mindset and are plugged into the best networks.

Let me repeat that: It is so much more about mindset, people, and networks.

Skills and knowledge in isolation do not always bring the change you need. Discipline, conscientiousness, and ceaseless research are no longer enough. You need more. You need to connect with people and drive collaboration. You need access to insights and create a feedback loop—collecting fast and frequent feedback from your customers and stakeholders to increase your chances of adapting to emerging changes.

Alexander Osterwalder and colleagues further